The Time Garden Page 8

  "We're caught by cannibals," said the little girl. "Did you come to save us?"

  "Yes," said Roger. "I guess we must have. Excuse me a minute." For Ann was tugging at his sleeve.

  "Don't you see?" she whispered excitedly. "Didn't you hear her say her name's Martha? It's Mother! It's Mother when she was a little girl!"

  "How could it be?" said Roger.

  "I don't know, it just is," said Ann.

  "Why not?" said Eliza. "If all time is going on at once, the magic could take the wrong switch, couldn't it? We wanted to be with our mothers, but we didn't say when! The magic must have caught up with them way back in the past somewhere!"

  "It's possible," admitted Roger. "That would be why we see the little one more clearly, I suppose, if she's our mother."

  "Yes, and the next-smallest one must be mine. I can see her lots plainer!" Eliza was excited now. "And the other two must be Uncle Mark and Aunt Jane! Mother always said they had wonderful exciting times together!"

  "But they weren't brought up on a South Sea Island!" objected Roger. "They would have mentioned it."

  "What are you saying?" called the little girl Martha. "I can't hear up here."

  Roger looked up at her. She did look like his mother, sort of. And she looked even more like the baby pictures that turned up from time to time in old trunks or his mother's bureau drawers. A warm protective feeling surged through him suddenly. But he proceeded with caution.

  "How did you get here?"

  "I wished," said Martha. "Only I wished wrong and the cannibals caught me. And then Mark and Jane and Kathie wished, and followed me and got caught, too. We've got a kind of magic."

  "Why, so have we!" said Ann, beaming at her.

  "I knew it!" whispered Eliza to Roger. "I always knew Mother and the aunts and Uncle Mark had magic adventures back in the olden days! Something Mother said once made me think so. This is the most wonderful thing that's happened to us yet!"

  "We've been having magic adventures all summer," confided Martha. "Only we've never run into any other magic children before. I wonder why it happened now?"

  "Shall we tell her who we are?" whispered Ann to Eliza and Roger. "I want to."

  "I don't think so." Roger shook his head regretfully. "I think she's too young to stand it."

  "Her infant brain would give way," agreed Eliza.

  "How old are you?" Ann asked the small (yet later to be so grown-up and wise and motherly) Martha.

  "I'm seven years old," said Martha. "I'm in the second grade next year. My teacher's name is Miss Van Buskirk."

  "Why, she's younger than I am!" marveled Ann.

  At this point there was a stirring among the other pinioned forms.

  "Where am I?" said the one who was really Aunt Katharine (and Eliza's mother).

  "Who's there?" said the boy who was Uncle Mark.

  "It's Martha," said the Katharine one, peering down. "Who in the world is she talking to?"

  "Honestly!" said the one who would grow up to be Aunt Jane. "Standing there gossiping at a time like this!" She glared down at Roger and Ann and Eliza. "Who are you?" she said crossly. If you wonder why she was cross, try being tied to a spear on a cannibal island for a few hours, and you may know.

  A flurry of explanations and introductions followed. The cannibals meanwhile slumbered on, lulled by the music of seven childish voices, all talking at once.

  "They're in a magic adventure, too," Martha was babbling happily, "and our magics kind of overlapped. Isn't that interesting?"

  "Oh, they are, are they?" said the Jane one, still crossly.

  "Yes we are," said Eliza. "Did you think you had all the magic in the world?" She had sometimes yearned to talk back to her Aunt Jane when their strong wills clashed in modern times, and this was her chance.

  But she and the Katharine one got along beautifully, and were soon deep in a discussion of the things their different magics could do.

  "Why," said Katharine, "when you think of it, there're probably hundreds of children in the middle of hundreds of magics, wandering all over the world all the time! It's a wonder we don't meet more often. It's a wonder we don't have collisions! How did you happen to come here?"

  Roger and Ann and Eliza looked at each other. Should they tell or shouldn't they? And would anyone, could anyone believe them if they did? Luckily there was an interruption from the strong-minded Jane.

  "Oh, for heaven's sake!" she said. "What is this, a social tea? What does it matter how they got here? The point is, can they get us down?"

  More discussion followed. But action spoke louder than words in the soul of Eliza. To dig the point of Jane's spear from its confining sand was the work of but a moment. Jane fell suddenly and heavily to the ground. And if Eliza forgot to warn her on purpose, so that all Jane's wind was knocked out of her, at least Eliza was sorry for it afterwards, and worked over her quickly and helpfully, untying the bonds that held her to the spear. And it would be something to remember secretly in future, whenever Aunt Jane started ordering her around in her purposeful way!

  Roger and Ann were busy meanwhile, freeing the others. "How did you get on this island in the first place?" asked Ann, as the liberated captives sat on the sand, rubbing their chafed wrists and gone-to-sleep hands.

  "We were after buried treasure," said Katharine.

  "Treasure?" said Eliza, and at the magic word all hearts kindled. "Can we help you find it? Where's it buried?"

  Jane and Mark looked at each other and seemed to hesitate. Then Mark nodded. "Follow me," he said. "Better be careful. Walk tiptoe." And he led the others across the sand, explaining as he did so how Martha had been rash and had broken the rules of their magic, and now it had all gone wrong, and he and Jane and Katharine didn't know how they were going to get back to their own time with the treasure, even if they got it dug up and even if they escaped the cannibals.

  "How does your magic work?" said Jane to Roger. "Maybe it could help. Do you say spells? Or do you have something with you? Some magic coin or something?"

  Roger admitted they had something, and took the bits of common thyme from his pocket, to make sure they were still safely there.

  "It gets us back to our own time when we're finished," said Ann.

  "Maybe it'd get you back to yours, at the same time," said Eliza. "Only it wouldn't be the same time, if you see what I mean."

  "Clear as mud," said Jane.

  "I get it," said Mark. "You mean maybe it'd take us back to your time with you, instead."

  "That's what I'm worried about," said Roger. And he repressed an inward shudder.

  Because what if it did happen like that, and the young Jane and Mark and/ Katharine and Martha came back with them to modern times? He could think of two ways it might work out. They might take the place of their grown-up selves, and there wouldn't be any grown-up Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha anymore, and that would be awful. Because nice as the small Martha was, as a parent she just wouldn't do.

  Or else there Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha would be, and there their grown-up selves would be, too, and they might bump right into each other. And that would be like those horror stories where people go walking down long dark hallways and meet themselves coming in the other direction. And everybody goes mad in the end, and no wonder!

  Roger emerged from his thoughts. "You wouldn't like it," he said. "It wouldn't work out. You wouldn't fit in."

  And now the boy Mark, who had been studying the sky, pointed out that the sun had started down from high noon and the cannibals would be waking up all too soon, and they had better be digging.

  Eliza had been dancing with impatience ever since the first mention of the treasure, and now as Mark heaved away a flat stone that was half-buried in the sand, she and Jane started scrabbling with their hands in the place where it had been. The others followed suit. Soon the corner of a chest appeared in the ever-widening hole.

  "Keep digging," said Roger. "We're getting there."

  . "Le
t's get the top uncovered and look in, first," said Eliza. "I can't wait."

  And though the boys counseled getting the chest out whole while the getting was good, the strong will of Eliza prevailed (assisted by the strong will of Jane). And at last the four corners of the chest lid appeared.

  Jane laid hold of them and pulled. The lid flew back on its hinges. Everybody looked inside.

  You all know what pirate treasure is like—the pieces of eight and the diamond necklaces, the emerald bracelets and ruby rings, the topazes and amethysts and gold moidores and all the rest of it. This pirate treasure was just what you would have expected, only more so.

  "We'll go halves," said Jane.

  "Let's start," said Eliza.

  She reached for the nearest diamond necklace on her side, and Jane reached for the nearest similar one on hers. But at that moment a furious cry in native language rent the air.

  "Wah! Samoa! Goona goona!" were the words of the cry. Or at least it sounded like that.

  Eliza let her diamond necklace fall. Jane never even touched hers. The seven children turned as one, and looked in the direction of the cannibals.

  The chief had wakened and was calling his cohorts. Siesta time was over. A hundred savage hands reached for a hundred savage spears and two hundred savage eyes lighted up with joy, hunger and avarice as they saw the children and the treasure. Two hundred feet raced over the sand.

  There was only one thing to do.

  "Quick!" cried Mark to Roger. "Make the wish! Any time's better than this one!"

  Roger had hardly a second to do it in. Yet as he rubbed the stalk of common thyme, he managed to think a long careful wish. Make it be like the time with Jo and Meg and Laurie, he thought. Take them back to their own time and us to ours. Please.

  Ann and Eliza leaned with him to sniff the Thanksgiving-y scent. Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha watched what they did and did likewise.

  The next Ann and Roger and Eliza knew, they were in the kitchen garden. Roger poked the gray leaved stalk quickly back into the earth, where it immediately grew again.

  Eliza looked around her. "Darn!" she said. "Not only the treasure gone, but those children, too! I liked them! Why couldn't we have brought them back with us?"

  "We couldn't have kept them," Roger reminded her. "Mother and your mother would have found out sooner or later, and then think what would happen!"

  Ann and Eliza thought.

  "At least we could have played with them all summer!" said Eliza.

  Roger looked at her. "They're not toys! They have their own lives to lead. It's better this way."

  And the others reluctantly nodded.

  "I'm going to understand Mother a lot better from now on, though," said Eliza. "Now I know she's been through the mill of the magic, too! And maybe now we know how, we can run into all of them again all the time!"

  "Only the next time," said Ann, "I'd rather have Mother be just Mother."

  And Roger agreed.

  6. Time Out of Mind

  There was so much to talk over about the island and the treasure and the cannibals that it was at least five minutes before anyone thought of telling the Natterjack. The one who thought of it was Roger, which was typical. As their mother often said, he was the thoughtful one.

  The Natterjack, when found (still under its counterpane of woolly thyme) and prodded (by Eliza) and reported to (by all three children talking at once), looked grave.

  "H'I thought it might 'appen that way," it said. "Difficult thing, common time. Not h'exclusive at all. Traffic gets crowded. Still, it was worth making the h'effort."

  "And now you'll have to think of something else, won't you?" said Eliza.

  The Natterjack gave her a look. "H'I don't 'ave to do anything," it said. "I may possibly try, should the h'occasion h'arise!"

  "Humph!" said Eliza. "If the garden's as magic as you say it is, you could try right now. The afternoon's still young. You could just tell it to take us to our mothers right this minute, and no nonsense!"

  "I could," admitted the Natterjack.

  "It'd be duck soup to it," said Eliza.

  "And you," said the Natterjack, "might h'end up in a stew! These things aren't so h'easy as all that. I'll 'ave to study the rules. It all 'as to be done according to 'Oyle, and that takes time."

  "Here, then," said Eliza, pulling up a tuft of the woolly-leaved thyme and holding it out.

  The Natterjack puffed itself up and its eyes seemed to send forth sparks. Ann and Roger and Eliza were reminded suddenly of its dragonlike behavior on the day it reformed the Concord kidnappers.

  "Put that thyme back," it said. "You don't know where it might go! Any more tampering with this 'ere garding," it went on sternly, "and it's the h'end!"

  Eliza rather shamefacedly replanted the woolly tuft. She knew (sometimes) when she had gone too far.

  The Natterjack relaxed a bit, but its tones were still grim. "It might h'interest you to know," it said, "that if you 'ad rubbed that there at this moment, you'd 'ave ended up on a sheep farm in Australia in the year nineteen twelve. And little would 'ave been gained by h'anybody." It yawned. "And now leave me in peace. I've h'unfinished business to take care of."

  "But you'll be working on it?" said Roger. "You'll be thinking of ways for us to see Mother?"

  "I may," said the Natterjack, "and I may not." And the three children had to be contented with that. (But Eliza was not contented.)

  Later that day Jack came home from his party of pleasure at Candy Drake's house, and of course he had to be told about the events of the afternoon. He was interested, not so much in what had happened, as in future possibilities.

  "This is keen," he said. "If you could tune in on Mother and the others that way, we can pick them up again at all kinds of interesting times. Like when Uncle Mark made the touchdown for Harvard. Or when Pop proposed to Mother at the Umpty Six Formal!"

  "Who cares about things like that?" said Eliza. "It's more of their magic adventures I want to see. And all the other magic children we might run into! We might find the Phoenix and the Carpet ones! Or that boy in The Midnight Folk the night he went to the witches' meeting and met Rollicum Bitem! Now we know about common thyme we can use the kitchen garden every day, and the Natterjack won't ever even have to know!"

  Roger shook his head. "It wouldn't work."

  "Why not?" said Eliza.

  "I don't know. I just know it wouldn't. It would be repeating, and we never have, so far. It's as if there were doors into the magic, sort of, and you can only use each one once. Anyway, that's what I think."

  "Bushwah," said Jack. "At least we can try. Let's go try now."

  "Well, not right now," said Eliza. "Maybe tomorrow."

  "Scared?"

  "Of course not. It's just..." Eliza left her sentence unfinished. She turned and wandered away into the house and upstairs to her bedroom. She wanted to be alone.

  "What do you say we go for a walk on the beach?" said Roger to Ann.

  "All right," said Ann. And they started down the stairway in the cliff.

  Finding himself by himself, Jack made a move in the direction of the kitchen garden. Then he stopped. What was the matter with him, worrying about magic plants and talking toads and things that couldn't possibly be true? That day in Concord with the March girls was all a dream. Probably. Or else there was some scientific explanation.

  "How childish can you get?" said Jack to himself. And he went into the house to telephone Mary Lou Luckenbill.

  Eliza meanwhile sat in her bedroom and thought.

  I hope the thoughts you have been having about Eliza have not been too harsh. She was really not so bossy and forward and pert and impossible as she all too often seemed. It was the way she was made. Not enough patience had been put in, and too many of those things that your teacher calls "qualities of leadership." To be a leader is all very well when other people follow you, but when they suddenly don't and you find yourself charging off all alone in a wrong direction, it can be
shaming. And when you seldom if ever think before you speak, that can be shaming, too, thinking back to it later on. >

  When Eliza was alone, she was haunted more often than you might believe by the memory of the reckless things she had done here and there during the day. And the echo of her idle boasting would ring loud in her ears and bring a blush to her cheek.

  But she was seldom one to admit she was wrong and learn by experience, or to sit back and wait for events to work out by themselves. Perhaps you know someone who is like this.

  And if she missed her mother just as much as Ann missed hers, she was not one to admit this, either.

  Now, as she sat and thought in her room, she decided to handle the current crisis in a reasonable and restrained manner. She would give the Natterjack three whole days to think up some kind of satisfactory procedure. If it hadn't hit on anything by that time, she would act.

  And that is exactly how it worked out.

  The three days went by without sight of Natterjack, and the worldly events they contained were pleasant ones, but there was no magic in them.

  It was on the afternoon of the third day that Roger and Ann and Jack and Eliza made their seventeenth visit to the thyme garden to see if anything were likely to begin happening, and found that nothing apparently was. The Natterjack, if present, was concealed. The four of them started back to the house. And because they had nothing to do and time hung heavy, they stopped off at the potting shed to bother Old Henry.

  Old Henry was busily dealing with early seeds collected from the garden, storing them away in little labeled envelopes, for next season's planting.

  "Breathe light," he said. "Chancy things, seeds is." And the four children could see that they were, some being smaller than grains of sand and as easily overlooked, while others were light and thistle-downish, the prey of every passing breeze.

  There were store-bought seeds, too, lying in tantalizing packets on the shelf, and Eliza stood turning these over idly. The lettering on one of them caught her eye. She gasped. Then, almost before she knew it, she had slipped the small brown envelope into her pocket. Old Henry and the others didn't seem to have noticed.