by Jane Langton
Eddy hauled himself up the ladder from rung to rung, and crawled at last into the tree house. The floorboards rocked beneath him, but they were dry, undampened by the rain. Rachel’s pillows were dry too. Shoving them out of the way, Eddy crept to the opening in the wall and looked down at the window of Emerald’s room next door.
It was dark. All the windows of the house were dark. But then to his surprise he saw a spark of light, not from Emerald’s window on the second floor but from the shuttered window in the attic. It was only a flicker glimmering between the cracks and almost at once it went out, but soon another little flame appeared, and then a dozen all together, flaring up and shining brightly.
Emerald had struck all her matches alight, squandering them like the girl in the story who lit all of hers at once to keep warm in the bitter cold. Here in Concord it was summertime. There was no bitter cold, only the wild wind and the sound of footsteps on the stairs below.
34
ESCAPE!
THE TREE HOUSE was a refuge from the rain, but not from the howling wind. The lofty shanty in the sky that had been built so securely by the nine hardworking Knights of the Fellowship was pitching and yawing like a ship on a tumultuous sea. The floor tipped under Eddy and threw him sideways. Struggling to his knees, he floundered back to the window—just in time to see the tiny fires flicker behind the shutters of the window across the way, then flare up and go out.
Then above the roar of the wind there was a clattering crash. The shutters rattled off their hinges and blew away. For an instant Eddy saw the dark window, but then a tree limb thrashed against the rain-streaked glass—and the stories on the scribbled leaves began to come alive.
From Noah’s ark the trunk of an elephant reached out and buffeted the window. The rusty lance of a knight in dented armor missed its aim and punctured a drainpipe, but Hector launched his Trojan spear and shattered the upper sash, Aladdin hurled his magic lamp and the Mad Hatter his teapot, Pilgrim pitched his staff across the gulf, and Arthur hurled the sword he had plucked from the stone. Then Dorothy heaved a brick from the Yellow Brick Road (throwing underhanded like a girl), and at last the colossal head of the White Whale rose on a hill of water and battered an opening in the wall.
The towering wave deluged Eddy and threw him flat on his back. For a moment the tree house rocked like a cradle, but then, very slowly, it came to rest. Now the shattering winds and driving rain of the mighty storm were racing northwest over the Green Mountains to toss the dark waters of Lake Champlain and rouse the people of Montreal out of their beds to slam their windows down.
Eddy sat up and tried to get his breath. But then the quaking began again. The floor dipped under him, the board walls creaked. Eddy crawled to the window and saw someone moving slowly toward him on hands and knees. The branch that had shattered the window next door had become a bridge for an escaping prisoner, the green-eyed girl called Emerald, the maid-of-all-work for Mortimer and Margery Moon, the storybook girl with a broom, the sweeper of cinders from the hearth. But as Eddy reached out to lift her over the sill, a stuttering noise broke out below, and then a grinding roar.
The chain saw belonging to Mortimer Moon was reaching up and ripping through the supporting struts of the house like a knife through butter, severing the planks that Eddy himself had hammered into place with six-inch nails and splitting the braces he had anchored with heavy nuts and bolts. The ruptured braces broke apart, and the house began to droop and sag. The walls tore asunder and the floor slumped and tipped with a shrieking of loosened nails and a bursting of snapped bolts.
Emerald gave a cry. Eddy held her and they fell together, while above them the scream of the chain saw died away. Softly Mortimer Moon closed the window of his bedroom and vanished in the dark.
35
THE WRONG PRINCESS
WITH THE END of the storm, the clouds parted and a lopsided moon rose from a bank of cloud. As if a drop cloth were lifted from the town of Concord, three church steeples appeared among the silvery rooftops. Patches of moonlight filtered through the leaves and shone on the broken boards littering the ground and on the girl and the boy who had fallen through the tree.
Afterwards Eddy remembered what had flashed through his mind. Were they falling at the rate of thirty-two feet per second per second, the way they should be? No, he decided, they weren’t, because the tree kept catching them in shaggy forks and billowing clouds of leaves. Even so, they dropped violently from the lowest branch and landed with a sickening double thud.
Eddy’s face was cushioned in a mossy hollow. For a moment he groaned and lay still. Then he pulled himself up on his bloody knees and crawled to the place where Emerald lay on her back in a pool of moonlight, her scratched face bleeding, her green eyes closed.
Was she alive? To his relief, Eddy saw the front of her shirt—it was green like a knightly tunic—lift and fall. She was breathing, she was alive, she was only sleeping. But perhaps it was the kind of sleep from which she might never wake up.
Then Eddy remembered another of the fairy tales about miscellaneous princesses in various kinds of trouble. Perhaps he had been thinking of the wrong one all this time. What if Emerald were not Cinderella after all? What if she were the princess who fell asleep for a hundred years?
If so, then the story had a simple cure, an easy way to wake her up.
Eddy knelt and tried it, and it worked. Emerald’s eyes opened wide. They were green, just the way Georgie had said. She blinked, and said, “Oh,” and sat up.
Eddy sat back on his heels, feeling a blush spread over his face from ear to ear. What was the right thing to say to a storybook princess? Should he try his wake-up system a second time? But then before Eddy could decide what to do, a racket broke out next door. There were shouts and curses and scufflings. Doors slammed. Something thundered down the stairs. Then the door for No. 38 Walden Street burst open.
“Mortimer, I have to go back,” whimpered Margery. “I forgot my bears.” A porcelain chipmunk slipped from her fingers and smashed on the porch floor. Her windup bird came apart in an explosion of clockwork springs. When she stepped on the hem of her flouncy nightgown, she sat down with a thump.
“Never mind your damn bears,” snarled Mortimer. His arms were full of coats and pants, but he had to dump them on the grass because his wife refused to budge. Emerald and Eddy watched Mortimer drag Margery to the car, shove her in the backseat, and wedge himself behind the wheel.
As the car zoomed away in the direction of Route 2, one of Mortimer’s neckties frisked into the air and draped itself over a telephone wire, a ladybug pillow flew across the road into the Mill Brook, and a shiny black shoe bounced into Aunt Alex’s chicken yard, where the little rooster squawked in outrage, demanding to know what in tarnation was going on.
36
THE APPLE BARREL
THE KITCHEN WAS slatted with dawn light. It bounced off the toaster and danced on Georgie’s unicorn pajamas, and glowed on Uncle Freddy’s scarlet bathrobe, and quivered on the green doublet that Emerald had cut from a curtain, and sparkled on the dot of gold in Eddy’s left ear. When the toaster clanged and popped up two slices of bread, Aunt Alex jumped up and cried, “Emerald, more toast? More jam, dear Emerald?”
But Emerald shook her head. She was too eager to tell her story. Her face had been torn by bristling twigs and her left side was bruised from shoulder to knee, but she looked around the table and laughed. She had seen only the tops of their heads before, the man and the woman and the little girl. But she had clearly seen the intent face of the redheaded boy whenever he climbed high in the tree with tools in his pockets.
“I was polishing the silver,” began Emerald, but then she was overcome with another burst of laughter. Of course there had been terrible danger and she had been horribly afraid, but all that was over now. Laughing felt strange and new, and she couldn’t stop.
“My dear,” said Aunt Alex, looking at her with concern, “you’re overexcited. Surely you should lie down.”
“Like the boy in the apple barrel,” said Georgie, beaming at Emerald.
“Apple barrel?” Uncle Fred was bewildered. “What apple barrel?”
“Oh, you know, Uncle Freddy,” said Georgie. “Remember in Treasure Island when Jim was in the apple barrel and he heard the pirates, and they didn’t know he was there?”
“Oh, Georgie, kindly shut up,” said Eddy.
But Emerald smiled at her and said, “Yes, it was just like that.” Then she stopped smiling and twisted her hands in her lap. “After that I listened on purpose.”
“Listened to what?” said Eddy. “What did they say?”
“Eddy, dear,” said Aunt Alex sternly, “I do think that people who have fallen out of trees should lie down and rest.” She shook her head, astonished. “I can’t believe neither of you broke a bone. I mean, you fell so far.”
“Not really far,” said Eddy, who had figured it out. “The tree kept catching us. We didn’t fall, we just sort of slithered.”
“I’m not really hurt at all,” said Emerald. “Well, except for a bump on the head.” Gingerly she touched the lump under her hair.
“Oh my dear girl, thank goodness,” said Aunt Alex.
Emerald had stopped laughing. Soberly she went on with her story. “Before long I heard about the terrible things my stepfather had done.”
“What things?” said Eddy quickly.
“Killing people.” Emerald felt in her pocket for the empty folder of matches. “He killed my father.”
At this Uncle Fred, Aunt Alex, and Georgie fell silent. Eddy leaned back in his chair and gazed at the green-eyed girl with yellow hair, the sleeping princess he had awakened by a trick from a storybook.
37
POOR LITTLE MORTIMER
AFTERWARDS UNCLE FRED pieced it all together, not only from what Emerald had said, but from things that came out later—newspaper reports and bitter confessions—after Mortimer was at last tracked down.
It was the usual pitiful story. Mortimer complained that it was all the fault of a father who had slapped and beaten him. There had been no way for poor little Mortimer to fight back. He could only stumble away and kick the dog.
No, instead of lavishing affection on his miserable little son, Mortimer’s father had loved trees— trees in the woods, trees in the city, trees in the countryside. And he had doted on one tree more than all the rest, the magnificent maple tree that shaded his house. Mortimer’s father had been photographed beside it again and again.
There were no photographs of Mortimer’s timid mother, nor any of Mortimer. Instead there were endless pictures of the maple tree in every season of the year, in the delicate leafage of spring and the rich green foliage of summer, in the blazing colors of autumn and white with snow in winter.
Mortimer had grown up in the shadow of the tree, hating and resenting it. Then one day when a crew of men appeared in the woods to clear a trail, his resentment found an outlet. He watched as the screaming chain saws toppled all the pines and oak trees in the way of a power line. Now the proud trees were nothing but trash to be hauled away.
That night Mortimer crept out of his father’s house and stumbled up the hill to the place where the men had left their heavy machines. Aiming his flashlight this way and that, he pounced on a chain saw in the back of a truck and carried it, exulting, back down the hill to the tree that rose in front of the house, spreading far and wide its universe of leaves. Then, lifting the powerful saw, he set its savage teeth against the bark and pressed the switch. Bracing himself with all his might, he crouched over the heavy chattering machine as it screamed its way to the other side. And then, while his father sprang out of bed and scrambled to the window and bellowed in rage as his beloved tree trembled and pitched sideways and floundered to the ground, Mortimer fled.
It was the first of many runnings away. For the next ten years Mortimer moved from one New England town to another, showing up in fresh new places, oozing friendliness and goodwill. In one of the towns he met a pretty woman named Margery, just married to a widower with a young daughter. It turned out that Margery’s new husband, Jack O’Higgins, was the owner of a lumber yard. But then one day—how sad!—poor Jack was careless with a chain saw, and suddenly Margery O’Higgins became a widow. Oh, how she had wept as she ran away with Mortimer Moon! And, oh, how kind she had been to bring along Jack’s orphaned daughter, Emerald! And, oh, how ungrateful that wretched child turned out to be! How stubborn and embarrassing!
Embarrassing? Yes, dreadfully embarrassing, because Jack O’Higgins had left everything to Emerald, not Margery. Stubborn? Oh, yes, the crafty child was horribly stubborn, refusing to sign a simple piece of paper, an ordinary transfer of property from child to guardian. Therefore the tiresome girl had to be dragged along wherever they went, from one town to another, in the hope that sooner or later she could be induced to write her name.
Little by little Uncle Freddy uncovered the long and sorry history of their travels. He learned that Mortimer Moon had been hired by the public works departments of three New England towns, one after another. Each time he had turned up at just the right moment when the town fathers were desperate for a new tree warden. Why? Because the old one had suddenly died. And each time—how strange!—no sooner did Mortimer take over the job than the trees in the public parks began to disappear. In all three towns it had taken the Selectmen a few weeks to notice what was happening. Then of course, too late, they threw him out on his ear.
Emerald told the rest of the miserable story to Uncle Freddy and Eddy as they sat on folding chairs in the dim transcendental air of the old schoolroom.
“I didn’t begin listening behind doors until this summer,” murmured Emerald, gazing through the door into the hall, where the bust of Henry Thoreau seemed to be cocking his plaster ears. “And then I heard my stepfather brag about what he had done to those poor men in Granite Falls and Mohawk and Tansyville. When I heard him snickering about the clever way he had killed my father, I couldn’t stand it. I screamed, and they threw open the door and found me.”
Eddy’s freckled sunburned face turned pale. Grimly he whispered, “So then they locked you in the attic.”
“And after that, my dear,” said Uncle Freddy softly, “you were in terrible danger.”
Emerald laughed. “But then the storm saved me, and so did the tree.”
The storm and the tree? Was that all? Eddy opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it again.
“And of course,” said Emerald quickly, grinning at him, “so did Eddy.”
38
WICKEDNESS OVERLOAD
AND THEREFORE Emerald O’Higgins, the former maid-of-all-work for Mr. and Mrs. Moon, was free to settle down with the family at No. 40 Walden Street. When high school began in September she walked down the road with Eddy and enrolled in the junior class.
“Hey, you guys, guess what?” hollered Oliver Winslow, spreading the news. “Eddy Hall’s got a girlfriend.”
Eddy just laughed, and Emerald blushed and pretended not to hear. On the first day of school the gym teacher handed her a hockey stick, and she began racing up and down a sunny field with a bunch of other girls. And then the music teacher presented her with a trombone. “Oh, sorry,” protested Emerald, “I don’t know how to play the trombone.” But Mr. Orth said there was nothing to it, she would catch on right away.
At home she worried about the empty house next door. “What will happen to it?” she asked Uncle Fred. “I mean, it belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Moon, but they’ve run away. What if they come back?”
“They’ll never come back,” said Uncle Fred.
“It’s your house now,” said Aunt Alex. “After all, you’re next of kin.”
“M
y house!” Emerald thought of the rooms she had cleaned, the floors she had scrubbed, the attic where she had been imprisoned. “But I don’t want it,” she said quickly. “I don’t want that house at all.”
“Then you must sell it,” said Uncle Fred.
“I’ll call the real estate person,” said Aunt Alex. “I forget her name.”
Of course it was Annabelle Broom. Annabelle came at once. But then she was dismayed to hear that it was not No. 40 Walden Street that was for sale, but the house next door.
“Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry,” said Annabelle, snatching up her pocketbook. “You’ll have to call another realtor. When it’s a matter of wickedness overload, my firm wants nothing to do with it.”
39
THE GRAND OLD TREE
BY THIS TIME THE enormous tree was famous all over New England. All over the world! Botanists came from near and far to study it.
One was the famous Princeton professor Aristotle Socrates Teasdale. Professor Teasdale crawled around the tree and clambered over the massive roots. “A new species, I think,” he said, inspecting a twig with a magnifying glass. “I shall call it Arborea teasdaliana.”
“Vy, no,” said Professor Donkbinkel from the University of Zurich, peering at the rugged bark. “Ziss tree iss zhurely a new zort of valnut.” He coughed modestly. “Let uz name it Arborea donkbinklia.”
