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Authors: PAMELA DEAN

BOOK: The Secret Country

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“You can’t unless you can explain it.”

“Nonsense.”

Patrick became inarticulate, and Ted said to Ruth, “What do you want to do about it?”

“I want to make it so we don’t have to go back and forth all the time and get yelled at wherever we go, so we can settle down here and finish the story.”

“Me too,” said Ellen.

“You do,” said Ted. Laura looked at him. She knew that tone. If she had told her mother that she wanted to paint her room in red and white stripes, she would have been answered in just that tone.

“Do you think this is in our heads?” Ted asked Ruth.

“What difference does that make?”

“It sure as hell makes a difference to me.”

“Why?”

Ellen felt in the bag for marshmallows and discovered that Laura had eaten them all. “You pig,” she said mildly.

“Shut up,” said Ruth. “Why, Ted?”

“Well, look,” said Ted. “Lord Randolph is going to poison the King, right?”

“I suppose. If this is our game, yes, he is.”

“And then I have to kill Randolph, right? Because the King was my father? And I’m the new King?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“Ruth, I don’t want Randolph to poison the King.”

“Of course you don’t,” said Laura, relieved to hear someone say something she could understand. “The King is a good, kind man, but he’s been corrupted, and he’s old, and—”

“You don’t know that,” said Ted. “I met him, and he
is
a good, kind man. And I met Randolph, and I don’t want to kill him, either.”

“Well, of course not, that’s the point,” said Ellen, “he’s your best friend, but you kill him for his honor and yours because—”

“Ellen!” Ted shrieked, and startled them all. He stood up and threw his stick into the fire. “You don’t know anything, none of you do.”

“I made up as much as you did!” said Ellen.

“That’s not what he means,” said Ruth. “Sit down, Ted.”

“I have a good mind to quit right now,” said Ted, not moving. “What
do
I mean, if you’re so smart?”

“It’s real, that’s what you mean.”

“But I tell you, it isn’t,” broke in Patrick. “It can’t be. There’s no such thing as magic.”

“Shut up, Horatio,” said Ted, scornfully.

“My philosophy’s as good as yours!”

“But even if it is real,” said Ruth, “how can you miss the Unicorn Hunt and the Banquet of Midsummer Eve, Ted, and Fence fighting the Dragon?”

“How can I miss watching the King die, and killing Randolph?” said Ted, still scornfully. “Not to mention dying myself and talking to a lot of ghosts and killing God knows what-all all over the battlefield and trying to run a kingdom when I hate politics?”

“Do you have to do all that?” asked Ellen.

“Yeah!” said Laura. “Can’t we say Randolph doesn’t poison the King? Then the rest would be fun, until the battle.”

“And then what?” said Ted, less scornfully.

“We could go home,” said Laura, dubiously.

“We could see what happens and decide later,” said Ruth.

“Well,” said Ted. “I tell you right now, no matter what happens, I won’t kill Randolph.”

“You’d better figure out how to stop him poisoning the King, then,” said Patrick.

“I thought you thought changing things would be dangerous,” said Ruth.

“Well,” said Patrick, “it might not be so bad if we agreed very carefully on what we want to happen. And you’re obviously going to try to change things no matter what I think, so you might as well change the right thing.”

“I’m not sure that is the right thing,” said Ted. “Randolph poisons the King because the King won’t see sense about the battle strategy, and if the King won’t, somebody had better poison him, or the dragons will get us all.”

“So if we just persuade the King about the battle strategy,” said Ruth, “everything will be all right.”

“Probably,” said Ted. “There’s still the battle. I still have to die in the battle. Which I won’t, I can tell you.”

“Nonsense, of course you don’t,” said Ruth. “If we can change the King’s mind, we can change anything; it doesn’t have to go the way the game went unless we want it to.”

“Don’t get so cocky,” said Patrick. “Wait until you see how hard it is to change things, and what happens when you try. It really could be dangerous, you know, if you think it’s real.”

“All right, we hear you,” said Ted. “It can’t be any more dangerous than dying in battle, can it?”

Patrick was silent.

“So how do we persuade the King?” asked Ellen.

“Why do you have to persuade him?” asked Laura. “Why can’t we just say he decides to fight the battle right?”

“That’s what I meant about agreeing carefully beforehand,” said Patrick, approvingly. Laura was dumbstruck. “But we’ll have to figure out all the details of who convinces him, if we don’t convince him ourselves.”

“We could try Laurie’s way on something else first,” said Ruth.

“The time!” said Patrick. “Let’s try to change the time so we don’t have to sneak around so much. We can tell right away if that’s worked.”

“How shall we change it?” said Ruth.

“Let’s say,” said Patrick, “that no matter how long we spend here it’s only five minutes at home, and we’ll be the same age when we get back even if we’ve been here long enough to grow up.”

“I don’t want to grow up twice!” said Laura.

“It doesn’t hurt, Laurie,” said Ruth.

“How would you know?” said Ellen. “You ever been grown up?”

“Shut up,” said Patrick. “Laura, it would be worse the other way, you know. You wouldn’t know how to be grown up in the real world, and if you were a grown-up they’d expect you to know.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to go home at all?”

“You sure as hell would,” said Ted. “Do you know what kind of trouble I’d get in if I came home without you?”

“Oh, all right, I’ll come home and grow up twice.”

“It’ll take you two tries to get it right anyway,” said Ted.

Laura, abandoning herself to Princess Laura, opened her mouth.

“And
other
objections?” asked Patrick.

“Well,” said Ruth, “all those ideas are just out of books.”

“So’s the rest of the game!” said Patrick, exasperated.

“All right,” said Ruth.

“Do we all agree?” asked Patrick.

They all muttered and nodded.

“Now we have to check it,” said Patrick. “Whatever time it was when we decided, it should still be then, or only five minutes later, when we get home.” He looked at his wrist and yelped.

“What’s wrong with you?” said Ruth.

“That’s not my watch!”

“What?” said Ted.

“Look at that!” said Patrick furiously. Ellen, who was next to him, did so.

“Hey!” she said. “That’s your old watch, Patrick, not the new one with the ugly numbers.”

“Digital,” said Patrick, in a tone that told Laura that Ellen knew perfectly well what the watch was called, and pretended to forget for the sole purpose of irritating Patrick. “And it is not my old watch, either.”

“How can you tell in this light, anyway?” said Ruth. “Why don’t you go home to check what time it is there, Patrick, and then you can look at the watch better.”

“It hasn’t been long enough,” said Patrick, “we only just decided. It’s one-thirty. If I leave here at two by this watch—assuming the lousy thing works—and it’s still one-thirty when I get home, then we’ll know we managed to change something.”

“My watch says one-thirty too,” said Ruth, “and it really is my watch and it does work. If they both say two at the same time we’ll know yours is okay.”

“What do we do in the meantime?” said Patrick.

“I’d better tell you about the council I went to yesterday,” said Ted, “so you’ll know what we’re up against. Aren’t there any more marshmallows?”

“Laurie ate them,” said Ellen, righteously.

“You can buy me some more,” said Ted to his sister, “since you’re so rich.”

Ellen stifled Laura’s outraged exclamations, and Ted took up his tale.

CHAPTER 6

THE beginning of his narrative was accorded a polite silence. Laura thought he was doing a good job. He could quote Benjamin and even imitate his voice. This was not like Ted, and not at all like Edward. Laura wondered who Ted was being. Fence was a good storyteller; perhaps Ted was being Fence.

“That was the West Tower,” she said, when he told them about the room full of clothes. “First floor is old—”

“What in the hell,” said Patrick, “are we supposed to do about clothes? If Benjamin says he doesn’t want to see ours again, he means it.”

“One of us,” said Ellen, “must make a daring foray to the West Tower and find garments that will fit us withal.”

Laura, judging by the standards of their game, found this idea good. Then she began to imagine the actual deed, and felt dismayed.

“Will you let me finish!” said Ted, sounding exactly like Ted. “You think this is bad, just wait.”

They all shut up, and Ted went on. The further he got into the king’s council, the more his hearers muttered and fidgeted. “And then,” said Ted, “Andrew said Fence was a traitor.”

“What!” said the other four.

“But that’s wrong!” said Ellen. “He’s just supposed to say that the Dragon King’s men dressed themselves up to be the likeness of monsters, and that King John, when he came to write his book, being a man—”

“—of most piercing wit,” said Laura, “did devise an allegory of plain fighting strategy—”

“Well, he didn’t say that,” said Ted, “and you’d better listen to what he did say.”

They let him finish in peace.

“And the King didn’t even defend Fence?” asked Laura. Princess Laura was Fence’s particular favorite among the royal children, and the real Laura felt outraged on his behalf. Next to the Lady Ruth, Fence was her favorite character.

“And didn’t let anyone else defend him either,” said Patrick. “That was unfair. And I wonder—”

“Well, Randolph did get to say something, and the King did say they could come to him privately if they had anything to say,” said Ted.

“That might be dangerous,” said Patrick.

“That’s what Randolph and Matthew seemed to think,” said Ted, over Ellen’s snort and Ruth’s, “Patrick, you think everything’s dangerous!”

“Everything is,” said Patrick, placidly.

“No, but listen, Pat,” said Ted. “Matthew said maybe Andrew was a traitor, and Randolph told him to mind his tongue. And Matthew didn’t ask him why. They were scared about something.”

“What’s going on?” cried Ruth. “How can we do anything if it keeps changing all by itself?”

“That,” said Ted, triumphantly, “is why I think it’s real. Patrick, you see? None of us thought of what happened, but it still happened.”

“Andrew’s the one who’s right,” said Patrick. “I wish the King had let him argue longer.”

“Andrew’s the villain!” said Laura. “
He’s
the traitor.”

“Sure, in the story,” said Patrick. “But really he’s right. There’s no such thing as magic.” He threw another stick onto the fire. “I’m afraid this is my fault,” he said.

“Oh?” said Ruth, dangerously, like Lady Ruth.

“Andrew’s saying what I think, you see.”

“That Fence is a traitor?” said Laura. “That’s stupid! What kind of a game is it if Fence—”

“No, not exactly,” said Patrick. “That there’s no such thing as magic, I mean. But, you see, if there is no such thing as magic, then Fence has to be a traitor, or at least a quack and a villain.”

“Go on,” said Ruth, still dangerously.

“I must think so strongly that there’s no such thing as magic that it’s warping the whole hallucination.”

“You think that your mind is stronger than all of ours put together?” said the sorcerer of the Green Caves.

“Well . . . ,” said Patrick, “I think one thing, you know, strongly, and the rest of you don’t really think anything one way or the other; you don’t really believe in magic the way I don’t believe in it.”

“I believe in magic,” said Laura.

“You’re only a mouse,” said Patrick, not unkindly. “You’ve got no strength of will.”

This was so much in accord with what Laura thought of Laura, and so little in accord with what she thought of Princess Laura, that she was caught between sorrow and fury, and could say nothing.

“But the hallucination is magic,” said Ted. “If you don’t believe in magic, why did the swords work? Why are we here at all?”

“No,” said Patrick, “the hallucination has magic in it. It’s just a hallucination. There aren’t any swords, really.”

“Why swords, then?” said Ted. “We never said there were swords to get us from one world to another. Why should all of us think of the same thing to get us here?”

“That’s where the telepathy comes in.”

“Patrick,” said Ruth, “you are crazy.”

“We all are,” said Patrick, “seeing things that aren’t there and—”

“I keep asking you,” said Ted, “where are we really while we are having this hallucination? Laura and I got in terrible trouble for being late yesterday; you’re all worried because Ruth has a flute lesson at two—”

“Good grief,” said Ruth, “it’s five till now. I have to go.”

“You can’t,” said Ted, “we—”

“Maybe the time changed,” said Patrick. “Check it, Ruthie, when you go back.”

“Well, if it didn’t, I’m going to be packed off to my flute lesson—without having practiced—and I can’t come back and tell you it didn’t work.”

“So if you don’t come back we’ll know.”

“How will you know?” said Ellen. “She might have been hit by a car—”

“In the west forty?”

“—or gone through the trees into another place—”

“So go with her yourself and come back and tell us if the time didn’t work.”

“And hurry,” said Ruth, leaping up and pulling Ellen to her feet. “Give me the sword, Patrick.”