Aunt Maria

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “That will do, I think,” said Miss Phelps’s voice, high up, and zizzing and booming in my ears. “You must be used to yourself now.”

  Then I fell over sideways—flip!—and found myself on the mound outside the orphanage.

  I understood almost at once why Mr. Phelps found it easier to time travel as a cat. The first thing I did was to stick up a black fluffy hind leg and wash it while I let my nose adjust me to everything around. I was sitting in rushes—no, grass—among forest trees covered with huge pale green, heart-shaped buds which I smelled out as the bushes on the mound. Lilac, probably. In the same instant, I knew it was a warm day in a different year, and that, though spring was much further advanced than the year I had come from, by the sun it was almost the same day of the year. The quarreling of the birds in the bushes made my mouth water. I stood up and thought about hunting.

  An elegant grown-up black cat stood up, too, about a foot away. Mum makes a wonderful cat, like a small panther. As she stood up, a stripy tomcat came swaggering round the nearest forest bush and plainly decided that Mum was the next wife in his life. Tomcats are like that. “How about it, sweetheart?” he went in cat gestures.

  Mum simply swung one velvet forepaw loaded with claws. Scat! A fast stabbing swipe that got the tabby hard over one ear. It was wonderful. Then she sauntered over to me, leaving the tabby cat crouched down with both ears flat. Poor Mr. Phelps. He was only behaving according to cat nature. So was Mum, I suppose. She gave me a swift rasping lick, to show the tabby she was still in charge of a kitten and not ready to be any cat’s wife. Mr. Phelps backed to a respectful distance and then sat up, looking aloof.

  Then we all realized that there were human voices coming from the field side of the mound. We’d been too occupied with cat business to notice before then. We all raced in that direction—using the low stealthy run, where you move each leg alternately like wading—until one of the little open paths gave us a view down into the field. Cats are perfect for hiding. Mum and I lay flat on our haunches. Mr. Phelps, like an old trouper, settled into a tuffet and doubled his front paws restfully under.

  There were two humans down there. When we got there, they were doubled over in fits of laughter. One was a girl about Zenobia Bailey’s age with long, long black hair, hanging loose and straight so that it hid what she was like. The other was a man who looked like a student to me—that sort of age, anyway.

  “I don’t think it’s possible!” he said, as he stood up and tried to stop laughing. I nearly didn’t recognize him, even then, not until he stopped laughing enough to be just smiling. Then I saw he had the same long, long grin as the ghost. He had light mouse-colored hair, and he did wear it longish and swept back, and his nose did have a slight bend to it, but it was not enough to make it like a parrot’s beak. And his face only reminded you of a court jester if you had seen the ghost. I think Mum was right. The ghost was Antony Green’s idea of himself, not what he really looked like. He looked almost normal, standing in the sun, in old-fashioned trousers, laughing with the girl.

  “Can a person pass through death?” he said. “You mean, can a person pass through earth, don’t you?”

  The girl stood up and shoved her hair back. She had one of those long, gaunt faces fashion models used to have, and her clothes made me want to laugh, they were so out-of-date. I expect she was good-looking, but I didn’t like her eyes. “You said it. Not me,” she said. “I just talked of the tradition. I want to know if you really can increase your power by going into the earth. Don’t you want to try?”

  Antony Green shrugged. “Not really.”

  She laughed and patted his arm. “Well, I think you’re perfect as you are. Let’s forget all about it.”

  I got rather embarrassed to look then, because he grabbed her by her shoulders and said, “I’m not perfect. But I do love you, Naomi.”

  She kissed him and said, “Ah, but do you trust me? You go on a lot about men and women all being the same this way, but I don’t think you trust me as I trust you, or you’d let me put you in that mound and call you out again.”

  “Then I’d better do it just to show you,” said Antony Green. He smiled his long smile, the getting-out-of-things smile, and I didn’t think he meant it.

  But Mum did. She took off in a sort of tiger spring and went running down the mound. When she got to the grass of the meadow, she slowed down to a trot and sort of picked her way toward them.

  “Oh, look, there’s a cat,” said Antony Green. He was glad for the distraction.

  Naomi glanced at Mum. “A black cat for luck,” she said. Some of what I didn’t like in her eyes was the way they calculated the use of things as they looked at them. Mum was useful. “To show you there’s no harm in my test,” she said.

  Mum tried to show Antony Green that there was harm in it by weaving in figure eights round their legs. He looked down at her and said, “In America a black cat means the opposite. Bad luck.”

  “So you don’t trust me,” said Naomi. “After all your talk, you take the first excuse to back out.”

  “No, I don’t,” he said. “I’ll do it. I told you.” He bent and picked up a sort of green coat that had been lying in the grass till then. He sort of shrugged himself into it. It was long and full and dark green. He stood there grinning his long grin at Naomi. Suddenly he did look much more like the ghost. “On condition you do the same after me,” he said.

  There was that thing in Naomi’s eyes again—a flash of calculation. “Yes, of course,” she said. “The moment you come out.”

  She looked at him in a clear, truthful way then, and Antony Green tried to go on grinning, but it was the way you do when you have butterflies in the stomach. I saw he really was going to believe the beastly girl, and I dashed off down the mound to try and stop him.

  “Oh, look!” he said. “There’s a kitten now. What a beauty.” He kneeled down and put his hand out for me to smell, to take his mind off what he was going to do. Smelling a human hand is a sort of an acquired taste for cats. I liked the way his smelled, but it made me sneeze. Mum came and barged against him warningly. “I’m not going to hurt your kitten,” he said.

  “No, just my feelings!” Naomi said. “You’d rather play with two cats than do a little simple thing for me.”

  Antony Green took back his hand and stood up. “It’s not a simple thing,” he said.

  “Well, I know that, really,” Naomi said hastily. “Trust isn’t a little thing.”

  “That’s why I’ll do it,” he said.

  Mum and I sat side by side and stared at him. We both knew we had been no help at all. I sneezed again. The breeze had veered and there was a strong smell of Aunt Maria somewhere. The end of Mum’s tail twitched, and I saw one of her ears turn to try for a sound to go with the scent.

  “Are you going to do it or not?” Naomi said with real impatience.

  “Starting now,” said Antony Green. He took the green box from the pocket of his green coat, all shining and fascinating and bright. Mum’s eyes followed it in amazement. He opened it just a fraction so that just one strong wisp of stuff escaped and swirled around him. “I wish you two wouldn’t stare so,” he remarked to Mum and me. “You put me off.”

  “A cat can look at a king,” Naomi said, laughing.

  “True,” said Antony Green, and tried to give her the green box. She stepped back from it in a hurry. “Sorry,” he said. “I forgot you don’t like touching it.” And he dropped it carelessly on the grass. Mum was so curious that she got up and sniffed at it. Neither of the humans noticed, because they were standing face to face.

  Antony Green said, “By the power that is with me, I give you the right to call me from the earth, by my name and your name.”

  “And to put you in,” Naomi prompted him.

  “I’ll do that for myself,” he said. “I want to know if I can.” Then he took the green coat off again—it was obviously a robe of office like Mr. Phelps’s dressing gown—and dropped it on top of the box. “Here goe
s,” he said. He made Naomi a nervous, friendly little face, the way I do to Chris on the diving board, and walked to the mound. “I think,” he said, “like this.”

  I didn’t see what “like this” meant, because Mum dashed off and I followed her, in a last futile effort to stop him. We ran more or less under his feet—he had suede shoes on—and we tripped him up. Or else he stumbled in order not to tread on us. The last sight I had of Antony Green was of him falling, rather like Miss Phelps did the first time, with one arm out in a sideways curve. There was no crashing of bushes or even the thump you might expect. He just fell through the budding branches and the grass and some of a muddy path and straight on into the side of the mound as if none of it was there. When I turned round in the bush we had fled through, there was no sign of Antony Green and no sign of any difference to the mound.

  We crouched there watching Naomi walk to the place where he had vanished. She was smiling a little curve of a smile. She looked at the place carefully and nodded. Then she stretched both arms out and said equally carefully, “By the power vested in me, I hereby seal this mound and you into it. I lay it upon you to be there until I, Naomi Laker, call you out.”

  Then she practically ran back to the green coat to pick it up. “Ho, ho! Whoopee!” I heard her say.

  Aunt Maria came running round the mound. She looked much the same, except she moved a good deal quicker, and she obviously shouted just as much then as she does these days. “You did it, dear! Oh, my dear child! Devoted artistic darling! I thought for a while you were never going to get him in. No one else in Cranbury could have induced him to!”

  “The power of love, Mother,” Naomi said.

  “You’re not regretting it, dear, are you?” Aunt Maria said, plunging forward to look in Naomi’s face.

  “Not in the least,” Naomi said. “But it wasn’t nice, and it was hard work. I’m going to take the green box for my pains, at least.”

  “Why, dear?” said Aunt Maria. “You know you can’t handle it.”

  “Neither can you,” Naomi said. “Mother, dear, I think you should retire and let me take over. I’ve got twice your power now.”

  Aunt Maria started back with her hands to her chest and stared. Naomi smiled. The ribs of her face stood out. Her eyes were fanatical like Elaine’s, blazing to find a weakness in Aunt Maria. Aunt Maria did her more-in-sorrow-than-anger voice. She’s obviously practiced it for years. “I’m very hurt, dear. Very. I vested a great deal of power in you and named you to follow me. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Nope,” said Naomi. “You’re far too old-fashioned, Mother, and I want to start doing new things. And I noticed in your usual cunning way you pretended not to hear when I said I had the power. I have. The green box, for a start. That gives me the men. And I’ve got him.” She pointed to the mound. “That means I’ve got you, too, because I’ve got the key to get him out. If you don’t do what I say from now on, I shall simply open the mound. And he’ll make you feel very bad, won’t he, Mother, dear?”

  “Viper,” Aunt Maria said, using her failing-health voice. “Vicious girl. After all I’ve done for you!”

  “Oh, shut up!” shouted Naomi. “Can’t you stop pretending for an instant?”

  Aunt Maria shouted, too. “Vicious, vulgar, loudmouthed monster!”

  They had a flaming row then, screaming at one another in the bright green field. Naomi screeched such things at Aunt Maria that I almost liked her. She yelled most of the things I’ve always wanted to say: “hypocritical hag” and “lazy old bag—I do all your chores for you!” But Aunt Maria yelled things about Naomi like “scarlet woman!” which were just as bad, probably. I bet they were true, too.

  And right at last, Naomi screamed, “All right! All right! I’ll say the word, and I’ll fetch Green out this instant! He’ll show you!”

  Aunt Maria held up a quivering fist. “You rotten creature! Never another word, and not that word—ever! By the power vested in me, may you never use human speech again!”

  And Naomi dropped down and seethed, just like Chris, and her old-fashioned clothes came off her, until she became a tall, gaunt wolf, snarling at Aunt Maria. She wasn’t finished even then. She dropped low and came creeping as she snarled, ready to spring on her mother. Dribble was trailing from her open jaws.

  “Back!” Aunt Maria said. “Back, you bitch! Go to Loup Woods, and may it mean your death if you ever set foot outside them.”

  So Aunt Maria brought it on herself, in a way. Mum and I both squashed ourselves to the ground, as the wolf Naomi raced across the mound, right past us, on the nearest way to the woods. I know how Lavinia felt when Chris was near now. It’s rather like a human would feel if he or she went in the living room and found an escaped tiger in it.

  Aunt Maria, meanwhile, didn’t seem particularly sorry. Maybe she realized later. She picked up Antony Green’s green coat and looked down at the box in the grass underneath. Then grunting, rather, she bent down and scooped the box up with the coat, into a bundle, so that she need not touch the box.

  Thirteen

  I felt huge and heavy and rather sad at being myself again. Mum was climbing into her jeans, Mum-shaped again.

  “That poor, silly boy!” she was saying. “The stupid kid! Couldn’t he see—?”

  “Please get dressed, Margaret,” Miss Phelps interrupted from her chair. “Nathaniel is waiting outside until you are decent. We have a lot to discuss.”

  I got dressed, and Mum continued to moan. “It was our fault, too, Mig. If we hadn’t come down from the mound, he would have refused. I see that now.”

  “It would have happened, anyway,” I said from inside my sweater. “It already had.”

  When Mr. Phelps came in, he was holding a clean white handkerchief to his face, and he backed me up. “There is never any way you can change the past,” he said.

  “I was hoping to do something,” Mum confessed. “I thought—”

  “But don’t you see, ma’am?” said Mr. Phelps. He took the handkerchief away from his face and gestured with it. We all pretended that we couldn’t see four long red claw marks down his left cheek. “Two cats came down the mound twenty years ago, which means that is what happened twenty years ago. You were always going to come down the mound because you already had.”

  “Please describe what happened,” Miss Phelps said. “I wasn’t there, you know.”

  So we told her. It took awhile. Mum interrupted to moan, or say things like, “They never considered poor Antony Green for a moment, did you notice, Mig? They never even seemed to think he was feeling anything.” And Mr. Phelps annoyed us both by keeping saying, “I make it an absolute rule never to interfere with the past. That’s much the safest way.” During this, some people ran up the street. It was so unusual for Cranbury that I couldn’t help noticing. One of them shouted, somewhere at the end of the street. Tut, tut, I thought. Then, with a nasty jolt, I thought, I do hope it wasn’t Chris!

  Mum said, “Well, I can’t see what to do. Naomi put him in and she’s dead now, I gather. And I do think he’s suffered enough for his stupidity.”

  “Think a little,” Miss Phelps directed us.

  “Blessed if I can see—,” Mr. Phelps said. The doorbell rang then. He said, “Curses!” and strode off to answer it. Miss Phelps tweaked the net curtain aside and looked out. It was obviously no one interesting.

  She turned back to us and said, “I don’t like to see hope abandoned. It seems to me that both of you had a hand—or should I say paw?—in putting the unfortunate young man where he is. Would that fit the terms?”

  “No,” said Mum, despairing. I wish she wasn’t so emotional.

  “Yes!” I said. “Mum, I’m called Naomi Laker, too.”

  Mum saw the point and jumped up. “Come on, Mig.” She rushed to Miss Phelps and shook her little monkey hand. “Say good-bye to your brother for us. Thank you. We’ll go to the mound now. We should be back in half an hour.”

  “It may not be so—,” Miss Phelps said. />
  Mum had dragged me out into the hall by then. As she was opening the front door, someone said, “Is that so important then?” Mum turned and stared at me. “Of course it is!”

  “I didn’t say anything,” I said. “It was one of the people Mr. Phelps let in just now.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Mum said. She slammed the Phelpses’ front door and we set off up the street.

  Then we got lost—which is silly in a place as small as Cranbury—because I had never been to the orphanage by road and Mum had never been there at all. There is never anyone around to ask the way from. We found the sea twice, and we were coming up a small road from it the second time when we saw Zoe Green hurrying toward us, clutching her knitted blanket around her. Mad as she is, Mum rushed up to her in her eager social way and asked how we got to the orphanage.

  There were tears pouring down Zoe Green’s crushed turnip face. I found I was searching for something that was like Antony Green, but I couldn’t see anything. But then I am not like Mum—though Chris is.

  “Orphanage?” Zoe Green said. She waved blanket and arm the way we had come from. “Carthago delenda est,” she said. “Oh, my dearest Augustine, all is gone by.”

  She was even madder than usual. “Come on,” I said to Mum, and we both hurried on. Mum made pop-eyed faces at me as we went. I don’t think she had realized before how mad Zoe Green is.

  The orphanage was just uphill from there. Before we got there, we could hear heavy engines and the sound of trees cracking. We looked at one another, wondering. When we turned the corner, we found the hedge missing from the side of the road and what looked to be most of the women in Cranbury standing with their backs to us gazing into the field where the mound was. We ran. We pushed in behind them.

  “Extension for the orphanage, dear,” said the lady from the clothes shop.

  We looked over a flat space of mud and old tree roots, and saw two yellow excavators working on the mound. Half of it was gone already. The lilac bushes were lying this way and that on top, and their roots were sticking out of the reddish earth of the sliced side like twisted black wires. Everyone standing round leaned forward, staring intensely as the excavators moved in to cut another slice from it. I could see Aunt Maria in her wheelchair right in front of everyone, leaning forward as eagerly as anyone. One digger scooped another great chunk of mound away. The second chomped a slice from the exact place where Antony Green had fallen into the earth. We knew what everyone was looking for. We stared as eagerly as the rest, while that digger backed away, at the raw red piece of mound left. It was just earth and roots. Our eyes went to the load of earth the digger was carrying aloft then and watched urgently as it tipped with a slither and a crash on the earth piled at one side. But that seemed to be just earth, too.