Steel Magic Read online

  Greg was tearing away a big handful of creeper, leaving the wall bare but speckled with little patches of suckers from the vine. Whoever had sealed up that doorway long ago had been in a big hurry or careless. Because at the very top one of the filling stones was missing, leaving a dark hole.

  Greg scrambled up a tottery ladder of fallen rubble and thrust his hand into the hole, which was still well above eye level.

  “There’s a lot of space beyond,” he reported eagerly. “Maybe another room.”

  “Do you suppose we could pull out the rest of the stones?” Sara asked. But she was not too happy. She had not liked seeing Greg’s hand disappear that way, it made her feel shivery—but excited too.

  Greg was already at work, ripping free more of the creeper. Now he picked at some more of the blocks.

  “Got to have something to pry this mortar loose.”

  None of them wanted to make the long trip back to the house for a tool. It was Eric who demanded that Sara hand over one of the forks from the picnic basket.

  “They’re made of stainless steel, aren’t they? Well, steel’s awfully tough. And anyway there’re only three of us and four of them. Won’t matter if we break one.”

  Sara protested hotly, but she did want to see what lay behind the wall and finally she handed over a fork. The boys took turns picking out crumbling mortar and, as the fork did the job very easily, they were able to pass the loose stones to their sister to stack to one side. Midges buzzed about, and some very hungry mosquitoes decided it was lunch time. Spiders, large, hairy, and completely horrible, ran from disturbed homes in the creeper and made Sara a little sick as they scuttled madly by.

  At last Greg pulled up to look through the irregular window they had cleared.

  “What’s inside?” Sara jerked at Greg’s dangling shirt tail and Eric clamored to be allowed to take his place.

  There was an odd expression on Greg’s tanned face.

  “Answer a person, can’t you? What’s there?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Let me see!” Eric applied an elbow to good purpose and took his brother’s place.

  “Why, it’s all gray!” he cried out a moment later. “Maybe just a sealed-up room without any windows—the kind to keep treasure in. Maybe this is where Mr. Brosius kept all his gold.”

  The thought of possible treasure banished some of Sara’s doubts. It also spurred the boys on to harder efforts and they soon had a larger space cleared so Sara could see in too.

  It was gray in there, as if the space on the other side of the wall were full of fog. She did not like it, but if it was a treasure place . . . Mr. Brosius had always spent gold in the village. That story was true; people still talked about it a lot.

  “I’m the oldest.” Greg broke the silence with an assertion that had led them into—and sometimes out of—trouble many times in the past. “I’ll go first.”

  He climbed over the few remaining stones and was gone. It seemed to Sara that the gray stuff inside had wrapped right around him.

  “Greg!” she cried, but Eric was already pushing past her.

  “Here goes!” As usual he refused to admit that a year’s difference in age meant any difference in daring, strength, or the ability to take care of oneself under difficulties. He also vanished.

  Sara gulped, and backed away a step or two from that grayness. Her foot stuck against the picnic basket and she caught at the double handles, lifted it over the barrier, and scrambled after, determined not to lose the boys.

  Beyond the Wall

  It was like walking into the heart of a cloud, though the gray stuff about Sara was neither cold nor wet. But to be unable to see her feet or her hands, or anything but the whirling mist, made her dizzy. She shut her eyes as she stumbled forward.

  “Greg! Eric!” She had meant to shout at the top of her voice, but the names sounded like weak whispers. She choked, shivered, and began to run, the basket bumping awkwardly against her legs.

  There was a bird singing somewhere and the ground underfoot felt different. Sara slowed down, then stood still and opened her eyes.

  The fog was gone. But where was she? Surely not inside a room of the small castle. Timidly she reached out to touch a tree trunk and found it to be real Then she looked back for the wall and the door. Trees, just more trees, all huge and old with thick mats of dead leaves brown and soft under them. And sunshine coming through in ragged patches.

  “Eric! Greg!” Sara was screaming and she did not care. Now her voice sounded properly loud once more.

  Something stepped into the open from behind a tree trunk. Sara’s mouth was open for another shout. A red-brown, black, and white animal with a plumed tail and a thin, pointed nose sat down to look at her with interest. Sara stared back. Her fright was fading fast, and she was sure that the animal was laughing at her. Now she knew it was a fox. Only, she was puzzled. Were foxes always so big? The ones she had seen in the zoo were much, much smaller. This one was as large as the Great Dane that had lived two houses away on the post in Colorado. He was very like, she decided, the picture of Rollicum-Bitem in Midnight Folk, a favorite fictional person of hers.

  “Hello,” she ventured.

  The fox’s mouth opened and his pointy tongue showed a little. Then he snapped at an impudent fly. Sara put down the basket. Would he like a peanut butter sandwich? There were the cold ham ones, but only three of them. Before she could move, the fox stood up and with a flick of his plumed tail was gone.

  “Sara! Where are you, Sara?”

  Greg dodged in and out among the trees. When he caught sight of her he waved impatiently. “Come on. We’ve found a river!”

  Sara sighed as she picked up the basket again. She was sure that the fox wouldn’t come back, not with Greg yelling that way. Then she began to wonder about the river. What was a river doing on a small island? When they had seen that dab of land from the top of the stairs, there had not been any big trees or river.

  As she caught up with Greg she asked, “Where are we, Greg? How did all these trees and a river get on a small island?”

  He looked puzzled too. “I don’t know. I don’t think we’re on the island any more, Sara.” He took the basket from her and clasped her arm above the elbow with his other hand. “Come on. You’ll see what I mean when you get there.”

  They trotted in and out among the trees, which then grew farther and farther apart, and there was a lot of green-gold sunlight in the open spaces with grass and little plants.

  “Butterflies! I’ve never seen so many butterflies!” Sara dragged back against her brother’s pull. What she had first thought were flowers rose on brilliant wings to fly away.

  “Yes.” Greg walked more slowly. “A lot of birds here, too. You ought to see them down by the river. There was a heron fishing and we watched him catch a frog.” He made a stabbing motion with two fingers held tightly together. “He used his bill just like that. This is a grand place.”

  They walked down a gentle slope to where a bar of gravel ran out into a shallow stream. Eric sprawled there, grabbing beneath the surface of the water. He sat up, his face red with his efforts, as they joined him.

  “Fish,” he explained. “All over the place. Just look at them!”

  Shoals of minnows were thick along the edges of the bar, while water bugs skated on the surface and a dragonfly spun back and forth.

  “I saw a fox in the woods,” Sara reported. “He sat and looked at me and wasn’t afraid at all. But where are we?”

  Eric rolled over on his back, looking up into the blue of the cloudless sky, still dabbing one hand in the river.

  “I don’t care. This is a keen place, better than any old park—or any old scout camp either,” he added for Greg’s benefit. “And now I’m hungry. Let’s see what’s in that basket we’ve been hauling around all morning.”

  They moved into the shade of a stand of willows where the slightest breeze set the narrow leaves to fluttering. Sara unpacked the basket. It was Greg
who pointed out that she was counting wrong.

  “Hey—there’s only three of us. Why put out everything for four?”

  Yes, she had put out all four of the plastic plates, set a cup beside each, and had been dividing up the sandwiches. Greg had the red plate, Eric the yellow, the blue was for her. Why had she set out the green one also? Yet for some reason she was sure that it would be needed. “We may have a guest,” she said.

  “What do you mean? There’s no one here but us.” Eric laughed at her.

  Sara sat back on her heels. “All right, Mr. Smarty,” she snapped. “Suppose you tell me where we really are, if you know so much! This is no little island in the lake, you can’t make me believe that! How do you know there’s no one else here?”

  Eric stopped laughing. He looked uncertainly from his sister to Greg. Then all three of them glanced back at the shadowy wood through which they had come. Greg drew a deep breath and Sara spoke again:

  “And how are we going to get back? Has either of you big smart boys thought of that?” She reached for the basket as if touching that would link her with the real world again.

  Greg frowned at the river. “We can get back to where we came from,” he said. “I blazed trees between here and there with my scout knife.” Sara was surprised and then proud of him. Greg had been clever to think of that. And, knowing that they had that tie with the castle wall and its door, she felt more at ease. But now she gathered up a sandwich from each plate and returned them to the basket. If Greg could think ahead, so could she.

  “Hey!” Eric’s protest was quick and sharp. “Why are you putting those away? I’m hungry!”

  “You might be hungrier,” she countered, “if we don’t get back in time for supper.”

  Greg was unscrewing the top of the Thermos when he suddenly got to his feet, looking at a point behind Sara. The expression on his face made Sara turn and stopped Eric in mid-chew.

  As silently as the fox had appeared back in the forest, so now did another being come into view. And, while Sara had accepted the fox as a proper native of the woods, none of the Lowrys had ever seen a man quite like this one.

  He was young, Sara thought, but a lot older than Greg. And he had a nice face, even a handsome one, though it wore a tired, sad look. His brown hair, which had red lights in it under the sun’s touch, was long, the side locks almost touching his shoulders, the front part cut off in thick straight bangs above his black eyebrows.

  Then his clothes! He had on tight-fitting boots of soft brown leather with pointed toes, and he wore what looked like long stockings—tights, maybe—also brown. Over his shirt he had a sleeveless garment of the same green as the tree leaves, with a design embroidered in gold on the breast; it was drawn in tightly at the waist by a wide belt from which hung a sheathed dagger and a purse. In his hand was a long bow with which he was holding back the willow branches while he looked at the Lowrys in an astonishment that matched their own.

  Sara got to her feet, brushing twigs and dust from her jeans.

  “Please, sir—” she added the “sir” because somehow it seemed right and proper, just as if the stranger were the colonel back at the post “—will you have some lunch?”

  The young man still looked bewildered. But the faint frown he had first worn was gone.

  “Lunch?” He echoed the word inquiringly, giving the word a different accent.

  Eric gulped down what was in his mouth and waved at the plates. “Food!”

  “Yes,” Sara stooped for the green plate and held it out in invitation. “Do open the lemonade, Greg, before Eric chokes to death.” For that last bite appeared to have taken the wrong way down Eric’s throat and he was coughing.

  Suddenly the young man laughed and came forward. He leaned down to strike Eric between his shaking shoulders. The boy whooped and then swallowed, his eyes watering. Greg splashed lemonade into a cup and thrust it toward his brother.

  “Greedy!” he accused. “Next time don’t try to get half a sandwich in one bite.” He squatted down to fill the other three cups and pushed the green one toward the stranger.

  Their guest took the cup, turning it around in his fingers as though he found the plastic substance strange. Then he sipped at the contents.

  “A strange wine,” he commented. “It cools the throat well, but it seems to be squeezed of grapes grown in snow.”

  “It isn’t wine, sir,” Sara hastened to explain. “Just lemonade—the frozen kind. These are peanut butter,” she pointed to the sandwiches. “And that one is ham. Then there’re hard-boiled eggs and pickles and some cookies—Mrs. Steiner does make good cookies.”

  The young man regarded all the food on his plate in a puzzled manner and finally picked up the egg.

  “Salt—” Greg pushed the shaker across.

  Eric had stopped coughing, though he was still red in the face. Somehow he found breath enough to ask a question.

  “Do you live around here, sir?”

  “Live here? No, not this nigh to the boundary. You are not of this land?”

  “We came through a gate in a wall,” Greg explained. “There was a castle—”

  “A little castle on an island,” Sara broke in. “And in the wall was this gate, all filled up with stones. The boys pulled those out so we could get through.”

  He was giving her the same searching attention he had given the food. “The boys?” he repeated wonderingly, “but are you not all three boys?”

  Sara looked from her brothers to herself. Their jeans did all look alike, so did their shirts. But her hair—no, her hair wasn’t even as long as the young man’s.

  “I’m Sara Lowry, and I’m a girl,” she stated a bit primly, for the first time in her life annoyed at being considered one with Greg and Eric, a mistake she had hitherto always rather enjoyed. “That’s my older brother, Greg.” She pointed with a total lack of good manners. “And this is Eric.”

  The young man put his hand to his breast and bowed. It was a graceful gesture and did not in the least make Sara feel queer or foolish, but rather as if she were important and grown-up.

  “And I am Huon, Warden of the West.” His forefinger traced the design pictured in gold thread on his green surcoat. Sara saw the scales of a coiled dragon with menacing foreclaws and wide-open jaws. “The Green Dragon—as Arthur is the Red Dragon of the East.”

  Greg laid down the sandwich he had been about to unwrap. He stared very hard at Huon and there was a stubborn line to his lips—the way he looked when he thought someone was trying to make fun of him.

  “You mean Arthur Pendragon. But that’s a story—a fairy tale!

  “Arthur Pendragon,” the young man nodded encouragingly. “So you have heard of the Red Dragon, then? But not the green one?”

  “Huon—there was Huon of the Horn.” To Sara’s vast surprise Eric said that. “And I suppose Roland’s back in there?” He pointed to the wood.

  But now the young man shook his head and his smile vanished.

  “No. Roland fell at Roncesvalles long before my wardship here began. I wish we did have his like to back us now. But you have named me rightly, young sir. Once I was Huon of the Horn. Now I am Huon without the Horn, which is a bad thing. But still I am Warden of the West and so must inquire of you your business here. This gate through which you came—I do not understand,” he added as if to himself. “There has been no summoning on our part. That portal was made and then sealed when Ambrosius returned to us with the knowledge that our worlds had moved too far away in space and time for men to answer our calling. Yet you have come—” Now he was frowning again. “Can it be that here also the enemy meddles?”

  “I wish somebody would explain,” Sara said in a small voice. More than ever she wanted to know where they were. It seemed that the young man understood, for now he spoke directly to her:

  “This land“—his hand made a wide sweep—“once had four gates. That of the Bear in the north has long been lost to us, for the enemy has occupied the land where it exists for a w
ealth of years. That of the Lion in the south we have closed with a powerful spell so that it is safe. That of the Boar, which lay in the east, has been forgotten so long that even Merlin Ambrosius cannot tell us where it was—or may still be. And that of the Fox here in the west. Some years ago Merlin reopened that, only to discover that there was no longer any way he could touch men’s minds. Then did our fears grow—” Huon paused and sat looking down into his cup, not as if he saw the lemonade there, but other things, and unpleasant ones. “And the door was sealed—until you opened it.” He fell silent.

  “I saw a fox there,” Sara did not quite know why she said that.

  Huon smiled at her. “Yes, Rufus is a good sentinel. He marked your coming and summoned me. The creatures of the wood aid us gladly, since our lives move along the same paths.”

  “But what is this country and who are the enemy?” Greg asked impatiently.

  “The country has many names in your world—Avalon, Awanan, Atlantis—almost as many names as there were men to name it. Have you never heard of it before? Surely you must if you know also the tale of Arthur Pendragon!” He inclined his head courteously to Greg. “And of me, Huon, once of the Horn. For this is the land to which both Arthur and I were summoned. Or is that now forgot in the world of men?” He ended a little sadly.

  Arthur Pendragon—that was King Arthur of the Round Table, Sara now remembered. But Huon—she did not know his story and wished she could ask Eric about him.

  Greg was scowling not at Huon but at the ground between his feet where he was digging holes with one of the spoons from the basket.

  “It’s completely cockeyed,” he muttered. “King Arthur is just a legend. The real Arthur, he was a British Roman who fought the Saxons. He never had a Round Table or any knights! Mr. Legard told us all about him in history last term. The rest of it—the Round Table and the knights—that was all made up in the Middle Ages, stories they told at feasts—like TV.”