The Magic Meadow

by Alexander Key

  Nurse Jackson looked a little sad. “Brick, it’s still spring here, or at least early summer. Nothing planted inside the fence will be ripe for a long time. It’s all fall stuff that can be stored for the winter—corn, potatoes, pumpkins.…” She shook her head. “We’re lucky to have strawberries—but they’ll be gone in a few days. Then we’ll have to look for other things growing wild.”

  There was a moment of uneasy silence. Then Brick said, “By tomorrow I ought to be able to walk well enough to do a little exploring. It’s gotta be done, and I’d sure like to try it. But, well, before I do, I’d feel a lot better if I knew what it is around here that chases the deer.” He frowned, then asked, “Would it be wolves?”

  “I just don’t know,” she told him. “It depends on where we are. When I was a kid in Alabama, dogs were the worst. They go wild and run in packs. But I haven’t heard them barking.”

  “How about bears? Do they go after deer?”

  “I don’t think black bears do. Grizzlies may, but this doesn’t look like grizzly country.”

  “What else would frighten deer?”

  “A panther certainly would. There might be one close by.”

  “A panther!” Lily Rose gasped. “Oh, my goodness!”

  Princess said, “But a panther is only a cat. I love cats.”

  “Well, I’ve never heard of a panther actually attacking a person,” Nurse Jackson said. “But lots of other animals do. If we could just find out where we are …”

  “There ought to be some newspapers around,” Brick suggested. “That would tell us. Has anybody looked?”

  “I’ve looked,” said Princess. “There’s not a sign of a paper anywhere on the place. There’s not even a book or a magazine. I’ve looked everywhere except in the upper bunks, and I can’t get up there yet.”

  Nurse Jackson rose, frowning, and made a quick but thorough inspection of the upper bunks. She came back shaking her head.

  “That’s really queer,” she said thoughtfully. “Old newspapers are about the commonest things in the world. Most houses have stacks of them. Of course, this isn’t exactly a house. It’s more of a camp of some kind, and it seems to be stuck off at the end of nowhere. I’m surprised it has electricity. But no papers! …”

  “You know what I think?” Princess said in a low voice. “I think we’re on a strange planet where they’re so unspeakably advanced that they don’t bother with the printed word—’specially newspapers.”

  “Aw, phooey,” Charlie Pill muttered. “What’s so advanced about not having papers?”

  “Because, silly, advanced people know they’re not worth reading. If they were, they’d be read for years. But who ever looks at yesterday’s paper? So, if you were truly advanced, you wouldn’t even bother with them. You’d use telepathy.”

  “Huh? Telepathy?” said Charlie Pill, and Lily Rose exclaimed, “Of course! They’d do like we did in Belleview. They’d tune in. Maybe we ought to try tuning in here.”

  “I’ve been trying it,” Diz Dobie told them. “But all I get is music, and it’s so far away I can’t tell anything about it.”

  “What about people?” Brick asked. “Can you pick up any of their thoughts?”

  The brown boy shook his head. “I can’t get a thing like that. We—we must be an awful long way from anywhere.”

  In the following silence Brick watched a stick burn through in the fireplace and slowly dissolve into glowing red embers. An awful long way from anywhere … An unknown place full of unknown dangers—and because he’d brought them all here, it would be his fault entirely if they starved to death or got killed by savage beasts.

  He swallowed, then squared his shoulders. Well, they weren’t starving yet, and he wasn’t about to let them—not as long as there were deer outside, and he could figure a way to kill one. He didn’t like the idea of killing anything, but he’d sure do it if it had to be done.

  Right now, the important thing was to find out where they were. There ought to be some way to do it.

  He glanced at Nurse Jackson. “You don’t believe we’re on another planet, do you?”

  She chuckled softly. “At this point, Brick, I’m ready to believe anything. I’m like the person who didn’t believe in flying saucers—till he saw one. As for being on another planet …” She paused, then said, “We could be. Certainly anything is possible. But when I got up this morning and opened that big door yonder—”

  “How—how’d you open it?” he interrupted. “I couldn’t budge it when it locked me in here.”

  “Why, I just pushed the knob, or whatever it is in the middle of that carving, and it opened right away. But if you couldn’t stand up and put your weight on it—”

  “That was the trouble,” he admitted. “So I tried to turn it. But what about this morning?”

  “Well, when I opened the door and went out,” she continued, “it really gave me a shock. I took one look at those pines and I said, ‘Great day in the morning! I’m right back in Alabama where I was born!’ Brick, if I didn’t know better, I’d say we were up in the hill country, not fifty miles from Birmingham.”

  “Honest?”

  “I mean it! Everything’s the same—the pines with the resin cups on them, the color of the clay, those clear springs out there, the dandelions and the wild strawberries, and even the very rock they used in this building. I just can’t get over it.”

  “Then—then maybe we are in Alabama.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t see how. With twelve hours difference in time? And summer instead of winter? Or almost summer, though I don’t quite understand these cool nights.”

  “Could we be in Australia?” he asked. “Or New Zealand?”

  “With resin cups on the pines? Certainly not.”

  “What’s a resin cup? I mean, I saw those things on the trees, but—”

  “A resin cup is anything you hang under a slash on a pine tree to catch the resin that drips down. From resin comes turpentine. That means there must be a turpentine still somewhere near. Maybe, if we can find it …”

  She rubbed her eyes wearily, and he saw her glance at her wristwatch. She gasped. “Why, I didn’t know it was that late! We should have been in our bunks two hours ago. Or has my watch gained time?” Then she shook her head. “No, it’s never acted up before. It has to be right. To bed, everybody!”

  As Brick wheeled Charlie Pill to his bunk, he suddenly remembered how he’d returned here to daylight when he’d expected to find it dark. Something seemed to click in the back of his mind, and for a moment he almost saw an answer.

  But before he could get a tight mental grip upon it, the thought slid away like quicksilver. Even so, he was able to catch a fragment of the truth.

  Time had something to do with where they were. Maybe, if he could figure it out, it would explain everything.

  Time.

  7

  WHERE ARE WE?

  Brick found it almost impossible to get to sleep that night. For one thing, he’d slept too long in the linen closet at Belleview, and he wasn’t a bit tired. And, like many a transocean plane traveler who has flown from daylight into darkness, he was not yet adjusted to the change. So for long he lay awake, wondering about that twelve-hour difference between where they had been and where they were now. In fact, it seemed to be a little over twelve hours, depending on how you figured it.

  Finally a curious thought, like a strange bug, came flitting through his mind and suddenly bit him. The result of this biting was a stream of equally curious thoughts that left him breathless.

  Suppose, he reasoned, that it actually took just as much time to teleport to a certain place as it did to travel there by more ordinary means? Only, instead of traveling all those hours and being aware of them, you sort of sidestepped them and got there ahead of time? Wouldn’t that explain it all?

  Well, not quite—unless it worked in reverse when you went back to where you started from. That would do it. For wasn’t it perfectly logical that those hours
you’d sidestepped would catch up with you when you went in the opposite direction?

  It was a beautiful theory, and he couldn’t see a flaw in it until he remembered the difference in seasons.

  That sort of boggled him for a while. Then it occurred to him that if you can sidestep a few hours, why couldn’t you just as easily slip around a few weeks or a few months? It made sense. Well, it made sense enough if you stretched things a little. Even Einstein had had to stretch things once in a while.

  He was wondering what Nurse Jackson would think of his theory when the earth outside seemed to shake to the pounding of heavy feet, and the big door shook as a huge body brushed against it. This was followed almost instantly by a shrill outburst from many throats, a wild madness of sound as if all the fiends of darkness were in pursuit of the monsters that had just gone by.

  Brick huddled in his bunk, overcome with a dread such as he had never known before. Those horrible sounds couldn’t have been made by earth creatures. They came from things, the unknown inhabitants of a strange planet. He had no doubts about it now. They had left old Earth far behind and had gone to another star system. The people who had built this place probably weren’t people at all. More likely they were ghastly humanoids of the kind he had read about—green-spotted blood drinkers who would hang them by their feet and drain them for a feast.

  In his fear he started to call out to Nurse Jackson, then he heard her slow steady snores across the room, coming from the bunk between Princess and Lily Rose. It seemed incredible that the terrible racket hadn’t awakened her, but everyone appeared to be sound asleep. He was suddenly thankful that the big door swung outward instead of inward, or one of the monsters might have forced it open. Outside now it was quiet, and the only sounds were those familiar peepings and ticktockings that he was beginning to find rather pleasant.

  Brick decided it wouldn’t help to wake up anyone now and get them all alarmed. It would be bad enough when they learned the awful truth in the morning.

  He worried himself to sleep finally, and when he awoke it was bright daylight. Everyone was up and dressed and practicing how to walk on their unsteady legs except for Charlie Pill, who again had been placed in the wheelchair. Nurse Jackson had exchanged her rumpled white uniform for what appeared to be a pair of workman’s coveralls, which had been in the lost bag he’d finally brought back from Belleview.

  “I got them in Donations with the rest of our clothes,” she told him. “They’re just the thing to wear exploring. Eat your cakes and we’ll get started—that is, if you feel up to a little walk. The others are going to wheel Charlie down to the meadow and pick some berries and things for supper. I think it’s perfectly safe today.”

  He swallowed, and burst out, “No—no! It’s not safe! I’m sure now we’re on a strange planet.” Then he told them what he’d heard during the night.

  Only Princess seemed undaunted by the prospect of being lost on an unknown world full of frightful beasts. She clapped her hands and exclaimed, “Oh, this is utterly breathtaking! If I can just get to see those things! …”

  “Well, I’ve an idea what one of them was,” Nurse Jackson muttered. “Or rather, what two of them were—because there were two of the big animals. Let’s go outside, Brick. I want to show you something.”

  He followed her out, and the others crowded to the door, wheeling Charlie Pill with them. Just beyond the flagstones at the entrance she stooped and pointed. There on a stretch of bare ground were some easily recognizable prints.

  “Horses made those,” she said. “I saw them when I came out earlier. They’re grazing down there by the stream. One’s black—I suppose he’s the same fellow you told me about—and they’re huge. To anyone who’s never been around horses, or heard them go stomping past in the night, they’d sound like a pair of dinosaurs. As for those other things that made so much racket—”

  She looked around, and shook her head. “I just don’t know. Possibly they were birds. Anyway, I don’t think they were dangerous. I don’t believe there’s any danger near us this morning.”

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  She pointed toward the meadow. “See?”

  Beyond the trees he could make out the winding stream. A herd of deer were grazing peacefully beside it. Near them were the horses—the great black one he’d seen before, and a beautiful pale one with a white mane. “If there was anything to worry about,” she told him, “they’d show it. When we go out, we’ll all keep an eye on the animals. The moment they act frightened, we’ll hurry back here.”

  When they set out upon their exploratory trip after breakfast, Brick carried only a small adze-like tool he had found in the shed out back. He could cut or dig with it, and its handle was long enough to make it a good weapon in an emergency. Nurse Jackson had located a stout basket in which she had placed two sandwiches for their lunch, and one of the knives that had been in her lost bag.

  They left the others picking berries and dandelion greens near the spring, and began to follow a trail that skirted the fence and took them westward along the edge of the meadow. The horses raised their heads and watched them as they went by, but the deer paid little attention to them except to move shyly aside when the trail swung too close.

  “Those deer are practically tame,” Nurse Jackson said curiously. “Why, I don’t believe they’ve ever been shot at. So it can’t be a hunting camp we’re staying in. Anyhow, there are no guns in the place.”

  “There’s a crossbow hanging on the wall inside my bunk,” Brick told her.

  “A crossbow? Well, I never!”

  He’d been so tired the first time he saw the thing that he hadn’t paid much attention to it. Then he’d forgotten it entirely, for there were all sorts of odd tools and objects and stringed instruments hanging about the walls and in the bunks, and he’d supposed they’d been put there for decoration. But now he wasn’t so sure. His bunk was the one nearest the door, and it was just possible that the crossbow was kept there for protection.

  Or were there other crossbows in the place, and were they used as silent hunting weapons? He hadn’t yet had time to look carefully at everything, nor had he even considered taking the crossbow with him this morning. It seemed far too difficult to use. He felt safer with the adze.

  The high fence was hardly out of sight behind them when Nurse Jackson stopped abruptly and pointed. Ahead, at the edge of the pines, was a small shed with a round ovenlike affair beneath it made of stone. It was topped by a copper dome. A stone chimney led up through the thatched roof. Piled on one side were a number of plastic kegs.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s the turpentine still I’ve been looking for,” she told him.

  His wobbly legs were already giving out as he went stumbling on behind her, and he was glad of the chance to collapse under the shed while she moved about, shaking her head and muttering to herself.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Everything and nothing,” she said. “Brick, I was raised in turpentine country, but I never saw a still as small as this. Why, it wouldn’t pay a body to run it. On top of that it’s pretty. With that thatched roof, it’s downright picturesque.” She shook her head again. “Who ever heard of a picturesque turpentine still, especially one with thatch on the roof?”

  “But why shouldn’t it have a thatched roof? That place where we’re staying has one.”

  She sighed. “Brick, you just can’t have thatch around a turpentine still. It catches fire too easily. I don’t know why this place hasn’t burned down years ago, but I’ll bet it’s been here for ages. I don’t understand it.”

  “Maybe it’s not real thatch,” he said.

  The idea seemed to startle her. The roof was low, and by standing on her tiptoes she was able to reach up and grasp a few pieces of the overhanging straw. They refused to break, and she was forced at last to get her knife and cut off a piece.

  “What d’you know!” she exclaimed. “It’s not straw after all
. It’s imitation thatch—plastic!”

  The roof, she found, was covered with bundles of little plastic tubes. The tubes seemed to be filled with a powdery substance.

  “Well!” Nurse Jackson said at last. “I think I’ve figured it out. We’re on a millionaire’s estate. He wanted everything to be picturesque, with thatched roofs and all, but he used plastic thatch so it would be safe.”

  It seemed to Brick that the plastic tubes had another purpose more important than just being pretty, but at the moment he couldn’t think what it was.

  “If this is on an estate,” he said, “why isn’t there a road so you can drive here in a car?”

  “Oh, the owner of a place like this would probably come by helicopter. He could land anywhere arqund on the meadow.”

  Brick felt doubtful. “I wouldn’t think a millionaire would want to bother with anything like a turpentine still. And why isn’t there a lock on that big door back there? I mean, that place has been there a long time, and a lot of things in it must be valuable. Why haven’t they been stolen?”

  “That sort of bugged me too,” Nurse Jackson admitted. “Take those blankets I found in the chest. All handwoven, the finest things I’ve ever seen. If they were mine, I’d sure keep ’em under lock and key. But there they are. Anybody can walk right in and walk right out with ’em. So I figure we’re in the middle of a huge estate, thousands of acres, maybe, with a steel fence all around it and guards to watch over it.” She hesitated, then added, “The only thing I can’t figure is the difference in time and in season—that is, if we’re in the South, like I think we are.”

  “You still believe we’re in Alabama?”

  “Well, it could be Mississippi, Georgia, or somewhere in the Carolinas or Virginia.” Suddenly she pointed. “See that tree yonder? That’s a sassafras. I know, because when I was a little girl I used to dig the roots of one of those trees so we could make tea. Brick, the only place you’ll find a sassafras tree is in America. It’s the same with those big pines behind us. They’re what we call yellow pines, and the only place they grow is in the South. You see? So we’re bound to be in one of the states I mentioned. But why is the time different?”