Secret of the Indian. Lynne Banks Reid

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СКАЧАТЬ their lives, complicating things still more. For of course, cowboy and Indian were enemies, and had to be kept apart until a number of adventures, and their common plight – being tiny in a giants’ world – brought them together and made them friends and even blood-brothers.

      Omri bought the plastic figure of an Indian girl and brought her to life as a wife for Little Bull. And shortly after that, it was decided – with deep reluctance by the boys – that having three little people, and their horses, around amid all the dangers that threatened them in the boys’ time and world, was more than they could cope with. It was just too much responsibility. So they ‘sent them back’, for the cupboard and key worked also in reverse, transforming real miniature people back into plastic and returning them to their own time.

      

      Omri hadn’t intended ever to play with this dangerous magic again. It had been too frightening, too full of problems – and too hurtful, at the end, when he had to part with friends he had grown so fond of. But as with so many resolutions, this one got broken.

      About a year later, by which time Omri’s and Patrick’s families had both moved house, Omri won first prize in an important competition for a short story. The story he wrote was called The Plastic Indian and was all about – well, it was the truth, but of course no one thought of that; they just thought Omri had made up the most marvellous tale. And he was so excited (the prize was three hundred pounds, he was to receive it at a big party in a London hotel, and even his brothers were very impressed) that he decided to bring Little Bull back to life, just long enough to share this triumph with him since he had been such a vital part of it.

      Unfortunately, things were not so simple.

      When Omri put Little Bull, Twin Stars and their pony – the plastic figures of them – back in the cupboard, they emerged much changed.

      Little Bull lay across the back of his pony with two musket-balls in his back, very near to death. There had been a battle in his village, between his tribe and their enemies, the Algonquins, together with French soldiers. (Omri had already learnt that the French and English had been fighting in America at the time, and Little Bull’s tribe was on the English side.) Little Bull had been wounded. Twin Stars, although on the point of having a baby, had rushed out and heaved Little Bull on to his pony, just as the magic worked, bringing them – tiny as before, but as real as ever, and in desperate trouble – to Omri’s attic bedroom.

      And thus it was that Omri was launched into a whole series of new and even more hair-raising and challenging adventures.

      Luckily Patrick was nearby and was able to help with some excellent ideas. Boone ‘came back’ too, and they also brought to life a hospital Matron from a much more recent era to help save Little Bull’s life. Later when he demanded to go back to his village, a British Royal Marine corporal, Willy Fickits, and a contingent of Iroquois braves, were brought to life to help take revenge on the Algonquins.

      At this point there was a most incredible turn of events.

      Boone, the cowboy, suggested that the boys ‘go back’ to Little Bull’s time and witness the battle. Of course they thought it was impossible. How could they fit into the little bathroom cupboard, only about thirty centimetres high? But Boone pointed out that the magic key might fit something larger – the old seaman’s chest that Omri had bought in the market, for instance.

      It worked. Each boy climbed in in turn, the other one turned the key, and each separately went back in time to the Iroquois village.

      When Omri got back – terribly shaken after witnessing a horrific battle – his hair was singed and he had a burn-blister on the side of his head.

      The boys brought the Indian troop back through the magic of the key, discovering to their horror that the modern weapons that they had given Little Bull’s men – Little Bull called them ‘now-guns’ – had proved too much for fighters untrained in their use. Many of them had been accidentally shot by their own side. Matron had to be brought back to treat their wounds, but eight had been killed.

      Little Bull was distraught, but Twin Stars comforted him by putting his new son, Tall Bear, in his arms. And Omri and Patrick took the blame. They shouldn’t have sent modern weapons into the past… But these worked very well when, later, three skinheads tried to burgle the house. The boys brought some plastic Marines to life and mounted an artillery assault on them just as they were rifling Omri’s parents’ bedroom, and completely routed them. It was exhilarating while it lasted, but now they were faced with the aftermath: reality, the present, the results of the night’s doings.

       4

       Dead in the Night

      The two boys sat on the floor of Omri’s bedroom and conferred in low voices.

      “We’ve got to plan what to do,” said Patrick. “One of us must be up here in your room, on guard, every minute of the rest of the weekend. We’ll have to keep your door locked from inside. Whoever’s not here will have to bring food and stuff, so I’d better stay up here most of the time. It’ll look dead odd if I start nicking stuff from your kitchen. I don’t know what we’re going to do on Monday—”

      Omri said heavily, “I do. I’ll have to go to school, and you’ll have to go home.”

      “Oh God, yes,” said Patrick, remembering.

      Patrick now lived in Kent with his mother. They were only in London for a brief visit to his aunt and girl cousins, Emma and the dreadful Tamsin. They’d have been back in their country home already, had Tamsin not fallen off her bicycle and broken her leg, so that Patrick’s mother had decided to stay on for a day or two to help his aunt.

      The boys sat in heavy silence. Omri could hardly bear the thought of being left alone in this increasingly difficult situation. Patrick could hardly bear the thought of leaving it.

      “Maybe Tamsin’ll die,” Patrick said darkly. “Then we’ll have to stay on. For the funeral.”

      Omri hoped this was only a sick joke. He detested Tamsin but he didn’t wish her dead – not now he’d seen death, not with those eight small bloodstained bodies lying under torn-up scraps of sheet, right here in his room…

      “What are we going to do about – the casualties?” he asked.

      “You mean the dead ones? We’ll have to bury them.”

      “Where?”

      “In your garden—”

      “But we can’t just… I mean, it’s not like when Boone’s horse died. They’re people, we can’t just – stick them in the earth. What about their families?”

      “Their families are – are back there somewhere. We don’t know where they are, or when they are.”

      “Maybe we ought to – to send them back through the cupboard, to their own time.”

      “Send СКАЧАТЬ