The Battle for the Castle (2 page)

“I'm always grateful for small favors,” his mother said as she went out the door.

When Mrs. Phillips had moved back to England two years ago, William had really missed her. He hated walking into the empty house after school. He'd turn on the radio as soon as he got home just so there'd be some noise to keep him company. But gradually he had gotten used to it. He could eat three bowls of cereal with nobody bugging him about snacks between meals. He could play his music as loud as he wanted to. He could even sneak some afternoon television.

He picked up the birthday package and turned it over in his fingers. Such a small box. It made him wonder. Did it have anything to do with the castle up in the
attic, the one Mrs. Phillips had given him as a goodbye present? In the weeks after she left, he'd played with it all the time, but after a while he stopped going up there. Poor old castle, he thought with a sudden pang of guilt. Better go see it.

He left the present sitting in the middle of the table and headed up to the attic. In the fading afternoon light, he walked around the stone and wooden castle. It looked smaller to him than before. When Mrs. Phillips first showed it to him, he remembered thinking it was enormous. He knelt down to raise the drawbridge and drop the portcullis. Despite the thick layer of dust on all the surfaces, everything still worked. That was good. And the legend above the castle doors still read:

When the lady doth ply her needle

And the lord his sword doth test
,

Then the squire shall cross the drawbridge

And the time will be right for a quest
.

It had all come true. Or had it? Mrs. Phillips was the only other one who knew what happened. William hadn't even told Jason about his adventures in the castle. About Sir Simon, the little lead knight that had come to life and his magic token that shrunk people and Alastor, the evil wizard who tried to trap them all. William looked over his shoulder half expecting to see the path leading out of the attic into the forest, but of
course there was nothing behind him but the shadowy shapes of old trunks and discarded furniture.

As he dusted off the outer walls of the castle with a rag from the corner bin, he tried to imagine what could be in Mrs. Phillips's neatly wrapped package. Another knight? Or maybe some furniture for the castle or a new roasting spit for the kitchen. Or the lead figure of Alastor. No, of course not. She had promised to throw both him and the token into the ocean.

It was getting dark. He stood up. Maybe the present had nothing to do with what had happened before. Or what might have happened. After all, Mrs. Phillips would know that he had outgrown the castle by now.

On Friday afternoon, William was just getting on his bike when Jason swooped up behind him.

“Sorry I'm late. How was gymnastics practice?” Jason asked as they pushed off in unison.

“It was good you missed it. I got bawled out by the coach at the end for not concentrating.”

He and Jason rode along in silence. Jason seemed to be trying out new riding positions or something. First he stuck his head out, then ducked it down and watched his feet turning on the pedals under him.

“What are you doing?” William asked at last.

“Stretching out my neck muscles. They cramp up if you hold one position too long.”

“How was your time today?”

“Okay,” Jason said. “Not as good as Dad wants.”

“He really pushes you.”

“Yeah, he does,” Jason said. “But I need it. He's like my coach.”

William was jealous. His father cooked Chinese food and listened to the opera and built strange things in the workshop that he usually forgot to finish. Maybe if he played baseball with William in the backyard or took him to football games at the university stadium, William would be tougher, more like the other guys. Maybe then he wouldn't be scared of jumping the trains.

William saved the biggest present for last. His father and mother had carried it in and leaned it against the wall of the dining room before dinner. There it sat under a sheet with a bright red ribbon tied around it. Jason could barely contain himself.

“Don't you want to open that one?” he asked twice during the meal.

“That's last,” said William.

“No,” Jason said as he picked up his own present from under a pile of ripped wrapping paper. “I want mine to be last.”

“Then this is next,” said William as he started in on the small tidily wrapped box from Mrs. Phillips. He ripped the paper off and tossed it on the floor. An envelope was taped to the top of the white cardboard box. In a thick black scrawl, Mrs. Phillips had written “Squire William” on it.

“What does she mean by that?” his mother asked, leaning over to see.

William didn't answer. He pushed his chair back from the table so he could read the letter to himself.

Dear William:

When Sir Simon and I put you through your training in the castle, he remarked to me that a ten-year-old was too young to be a squire. Twelve is the correct age. But of course, at that time, we had no choice if any of us were ever to get out of our predicament
.

I send you this present because I trust you remember some of what I tried to teach you about love and courage and loyalty. This seems the proper weapon for a proper squire. Use it wisely and in good health
.

With love
,

Mrs. Phillips

P.S. I did throw Alastor into the ocean as I promised
.

“You're driving us crazy,” his father said. “What is it?”

William lifted the lid off the cardboard box. The
token, a medallion the size of a collar button, lay in a bed of cotton. Everybody crowded around.

“What is it?” his mother asked. She reached over to pick it up, but William slipped the cover back on the box before she had a chance.

“It's a very special button,” he said. Jason shot him a look, but William just shook his head slightly as if to say, I'll explain later. Why had she sent it to him? he thought wildly. She was supposed to throw it into the ocean along with Alastor.

“William?” his mother said. Everybody was staring at him.

He shoved Mrs. Phillips's box deep into the pocket of his jeans and walked over to the big present leaning against the wall.

It wasn't the right bike. William knew it the moment he saw the size of the tires. And without turning around to look at his friend's face, he knew that Jason knew it too. William took his time rolling up the sheet and pretending to inspect the gears and the pedals.

“Gee, Mom and Dad, thanks so much. It's great,” he said. “It's really great.”

“We didn't get the one you two picked out, Jason,” William's father explained. “Frankly, it was pretty expensive and the bike-store owner convinced us that this one would suit William's needs just fine. You're the expert. What do you think of it?”

Jason got up and walked over to the bike. He picked
it up, flipped it over, twirled the wheels. “Nice touring bike, Mr. Lawrence. Twelve speeds, lightweight. William's really going to go far on this little machine. . . . As long as he has smooth roads.”

And all the time, William knew what he was really saying. This bike can't go off-road, these flimsy tires can't handle the reservoir path. No stamina, no endurance. No Nova Scotia.

William's mother began gathering up the wrapping paper. “How about your present, Jason?” she asked. “That's the last one to open before I bring in the cake.”

“Oh, it's nothing, Dr. Lawrence. I'll show it to William later.”

“Don't be silly. Why don't you open it, William, while your father and I are in the kitchen?”

As William unwrapped the two waterproof panniers, Jason said, “You'll have to take them back. They're too heavy for a racing bike. I got them for you so we could go on overnights together. You know, to get ready for the Nova Scotia trip.”

William didn't know what to say.

“This bike is all wrong,” Jason said. “The skinny wheels wouldn't last two seconds off-road. They may even slide out when you hit the gravel in your driveway. Here, give the panniers back. I'll get you the lighter-weight ones.”

Suddenly the lights went out and everybody started
singing “Happy Birthday.” As soon as he finished his cake, Jason said he had to go home.

William walked him out to his bike. Jason folded the panniers and shoved them inside his own.

“You heard what my father said,” William said. “I guess they couldn't afford a fancy mountain bike like yours. Nova Scotia probably wouldn't have worked out anyway.”

“Don't worry about it, okay?” Jason hopped on his bike and pushed off. “It's no big deal. See you.”

“We're still jumping the trains tomorrow, right?” William called out after him.

“Sure,” Jason said as he turned at the end of the driveway. “Meet me down there at eight.”

“Hey, Jason,” William shouted once more. But Jason didn't answer. He'd already gone around the corner.

William stood in the deepening darkness. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and closed his fingers around the small cardboard box. “Maybe I didn't want to go to stupid old Nova Scotia anyway,” he said out loud to the air.

The next morning William woke with a start. Through the slits in his venetian blinds, he could see that the sun wasn't even up yet. What was wrong?

The trains. Of course. This was the morning they were going to jump the trains. He wished he could blink and the day would be over. Then he'd already be done with the stupid trains and Jason wouldn't care that he didn't get the right bike for his birthday.

Mrs. Phillips told him it was good he was small. “All great gymnasts are small,” she reminded him. “And being different is not such a bad thing. It gives you a gentle heart.”

A lot of good that does me today, William thought. “A shrimpy kid with a gentle heart is not exactly your master train jumper, Mrs. P.,” he said. He opened the
drawer of his bedside table and reached toward the back for the cardboard box.

“This sure is one special button,” he whispered as he took it out and turned it over. The two-sided token had the power to shrink living things and then bring them back to normal size. Both surfaces were decorated with the head of Janus, the god who looks both ways in time. He frowned on the shrinking side and smiled on the side that reversed the spell.

William checked his clock. Another hour till he had to meet Jason. He rummaged around for his magnifying glass and his flashlight. “Let's find out if you still work,” he said, placing the token back in its box and kicking off his sheets.

The light bulb hanging from the attic ceiling was dim and covered with dust. William was glad he had remembered his flashlight. The animal he was looking for would be hiding in the deepest, darkest corners of the attic.

A mouse would be the best thing. Sir Simon used to zap them and roast them for dinner. William shuddered at the thought. But a mouse wouldn't be easy to find on such short notice, so he'd settled on a spider. Under the slanting eaves, behind two trunks, he discovered a large intricate web in the bottom half of one of the windows. The spider was resting, her slender legs
splayed delicately across the strands of her net. William blew gently on the web to make sure she was alive. She skittered across to the other side. As he pulled the token and his magnifying glass out of his pajama pocket, she let herself down from the windowsill on a silk strand.

“Janus,” he said, pointing the frowning face at her. In midair, she seemed to disappear completely, but he found her quickly enough with the magnifying glass. She was making her way across one of the wide floorboards.

“It works,” he cried. “It still works!” Then he sat back on his heels and stared out the window. So it all must have happened. Sir Simon and the castle and the road out of the attic.

Where had the spider gone? He had to find her and change her back to normal size. Even a spider shouldn't be left as small as that. He ran his magnifying glass back and forth along the floorboard. At last he found her, and just before she pitched into the crack between the boards, he brought her back with a flip of the token and the magic word.

He needed a safe place to put the token. Now that he knew it worked, he was scared he might lose it. It could fall out of his pocket when he was riding his bike or his mother could throw the box away by mistake when she did one of those cleaning raids on his room.
The castle. Of course. That's where it belonged anyway. He lifted one of the roof sections and tucked the cardboard box into a back corner in the master bedchamber. Mrs. Phillips's old room. That seemed right.

Downstairs he heard the hall clock ringing the quarter hour. He had to hurry. He only had fifteen minutes to get dressed and bike to the station.

Jason was standing on the cinder path looking up the tracks. William lay his bike down in the weeds by the side of the platform and tiptoed up behind him.

“Boo,” he said in a low voice.

Jason jumped and then stamped his feet. “Blast, William, I hate it when you do that,” he shouted. But he seemed embarrassed by his explosion. It showed how nervous he was, William thought.

“You're late,” Jason muttered.

“Not by much,” William said. “I was doing an experiment in the attic.”

But Jason wasn't listening. “Is that the whistle?” he asked, cupping his hand to his ear. “The first one is supposed to come through at about eight-twenty.”

“I don't hear anything,” William said, but his heart flipped over.

“I brought your panniers,” said Jason. “I thought we could go to the bike store afterward and exchange them.”

“If there's an afterward,” William said.

“Don't be stupid,” said Jason, but William could see that he was scared too. He wanted to say, Hey, Jason, let's skip it. Let's just pretend we did it. Nobody else will know. It'll be our secret.