Magic by the Lake

by Edward Eager

  "Don't worry, it won't be that," Mark told her. "That's not buried treasure, and we asked for buried. The magic couldn't get it that wrong."

  "I don't care!" said Jane. "We're supposed to catch on, just the same. I know we are. Otherwise it wouldn't be here. It all works out. Maybe it'll take us somewhere else. Maybe it'll take us to our own island!"

  Martha let herself be persuaded, and the four children arrived at the roc's egg just as the giant bird alighted over the egg and, crouching down, spread its wings and brooded over it, and composed itself to sleep.

  Mark started walking round the roc, observing it from all sides and making mental notes for his bird-watching book, but Jane was impatient.

  "Don't waste time!" she said. "It may be leaving any minute!"

  So Mark tied himself to one fabulous claw, like Sinbad before him, only Mark used the belt of his blue jeans. The three girls bound themselves on with their hair ribbons, all except Martha, who had lost hers. She used Jane's long white socks instead.

  Then, ready for anything, the four children waited for the roc to wake up and fly away. Nothing happened.

  "If there's one thing I haven't any use for," said Jane, after what felt like two hours at least had passed, "it's a bird. You and your blue-gray gnatcatchers!" And she directed a withering look at Mark.

  But at long last the roc awoke and, with a loud cry, rose from the egg. The children rose with it. Martha gave a loud cry, too.

  But after the first few sickening moments, the sensation was lovely, and the four children studied the scene below with interest. At first there was just heaving sea, but then a rocky coast appeared.

  "Island ahoy!" said Mark.

  But it wasn't an island. It was a vast continent that went on and on as the roc flew inland, over field and forest.

  "Where's it taking us?" said Martha.

  "Somewhere in some other Arabian Night, I suppose," said Jane. And a city full of mosques and minarets appeared below, just to prove it.

  "I'll sing thee songs of Araby," breathed Katharine romantically, looking down, "and tales of far Cashmere."

  "Don't," said Martha. "Not at a time like this. I couldn't stand it." Even as she spoke, the city below gave way to another forest.

  A sudden thought struck Mark. "I know!" he said. "Of course! Where in The Arabian Nights is there buried treasure? Well, sort of buried," he corrected himself. "Underground, anyway."

  Before the others could guess, the roc slackened pace and began circling lower and lower.

  "Does it know it's got passengers?" said Martha. "Will it stop and let us off?"

  "I'm not sure," said Mark. "Better get ready for an emergency landing."

  He started loosening the belt that held him to the great claws, and the girls went to work on their hair ribbons (and socks).

  For only an instant the roc hovered low over a clearing in the forest. The four children had barely time to get free and jump before it sailed away again. They landed lightly on soft leaf-mold.

  "Thanks a lot," called Martha after their departing guide. The roc did not reply.

  "Where are we?" said Katharine, picking herself up.

  "Don't you know?" said Mark, on his feet now and pointing.

  Everybody looked.

  Before them was a huge rock, so steep and craggy that it was almost a mountain.

  Mark didn't hesitate. He walked straight up to the rock, opened his mouth, and just before he spoke light dawned, and everybody else knew what two words he would say.

  The two words were, "Open, Sesame!"

  Immediately the expected happened. A door in the rock opened. Beyond it yawned a vast cavern.

  "It's the cave Ali Baba found. It's the cave of the Forty Thieves. It's that buried treasure!" said Mark, as though anybody needed telling now. "Come on!" He hurried forward, and everybody else followed. Martha hung back, but the others pushed her. As soon as they were inside, the door shut, of itself. Martha wished it wouldn't. But she looked round at what the cave contained and oh'ed and ah'ed with the others, just the same.

  There were all sorts of provisions, rich bales of silk stuff, brocade, and valuable carpeting, piled upon one another, gold and silver pieces in great heaps, and ancient Arabian coins in bags.

  "What'll we take?" said Jane.

  "Ought we?" said Katharine.

  "Of course. Ali Baba did, didn't he? It's all right to rob robbers!"

  "Money!" suggested Martha simply.

  "Better not," said Mark. "You never can tell with currency. It might be debased by the time we get it back home."

  "What's that?" said Martha.

  "Not good anymore," said Jane. "Better concentrate on jewels and precious metals. They always come in handy."

  So she and Mark and Martha sat down on the floor of the cave and started to make a pile of handy things to take home.

  "Gold pieces for Mr. Smith," said Mark, starting to sort these out from the silver.

  "And jewels for Mother," said Jane, pointing to a heap of diamonds and rubies no one else had noticed.

  "What about these carpets?" said Katharine, tugging at a pile of rugs. "One of them might be a magic one. We could sail home in style! And it'd be useful for later on, if the lake magic's really worn out after this wish."

  "Too risky," Mark decided. "We couldn't find out if it's magic or not without sitting on it and wishing to be somewhere, and then it'd probably take us there, and we'd probably get all involved in some other adventure and probably never get back to find the treasure at all!"

  And from their experiences in the past, the others could not but agree that this was probably only too likely.

  "Put that carpet down!" said Jane to Katharine. "You don't know where it might go!" Katharine moved on, exploring.

  Mark dumped the money out of one of the bags, filled the bag with gold pieces and jewels, put a few of the coins back in for his coin collection, and pulled the drawstrings. "Well," he said, "I guess that's it. Might as well start for home."

  But they didn't.

  "Psst! Lookit!" came a voice at that moment. The voice was Katharine's, and it came from deeper in the cave. "Come here!" she called, and the others went there, Mark carrying the bag of treasure. They looked where Katharine pointed.

  "Oil jars!" she was saying excitedly. "Thirty-eight of 'em. I counted. They're the jars the robbers hide in when they try to kill Ali Baba!"

  "But that doesn't come into the story till later," objected Jane, "after they've found out Ali Baba's been taking their treasure and they try to get even!"

  "They'd have to store them somewhere in the meantime, wouldn't they?" said Katharine. "They've probably just reached that part of the story, and this is where we came in! Anyway, there they are!"

  And there they were, thirty-eight perfectly ordinary Arabian Night oil jars made of goatskin standing in a neat row in the depths of the cave.

  "Sure, that's probably it," Mark figured it out. "They've probably just bought the oil jars, and tonight the robber chief'11 take them to Ali Baba's house with the thieves hidden inside them, and then in the story they're supposed to jump out and kill everybody, only that slave girl thwarts them!"

  "Maybe there's thieves hiding in them right now!" said Jane.

  "Let's go home," said Martha.

  "Wait," said Katharine. And daringly standing on tiptoe, she peeked into one of the jars. But it was empty. And so were all the others when they looked, except one that was full of oil, for the appearance of things.

  "We'd better hurry, though," said Mark. "They may be here any minute."

  "Wait," said Katharine, again. "I wonder how it feels hiding in one of those things. I've always wanted to find out." And before anyone could stop her, she had climbed on a convenient chest and was easing herself down through the neck of the nearest jar. "Plenty of room inside." Her voice came to them hollowly. "It smells of salad dressing, though."

  "Come out!" called Martha beseechingly.

  "Just a minute," said Katharin
e's voice. There was a scrabbling sound, followed by a silence. When she spoke again, she didn't sound so daring. "I can't!" she said. "I can't catch hold. It's slippery, and it sort of gives]"

  "How did the robbers get out in the story?" said Jane.

  "They used a knife, and cut their way through," said Mark. "Who's got a knife?"

  Nobody had one.

  Fate chose this moment to bring a sound of chinking and clanking from outside, as of many people mounted upon mules. A voice cried out something. The four children couldn't hear what it said, but it sounded all too much like two fateful, and familiar, words.

  "Somebody do something!" cried Martha. "It's those thieves! They've come back! They're opening Sesame!"

  Mark jumped up on the chest and tried to grab Katharine's hand to pull her out, but he couldn't get any purchase.

  From behind them came a sound of rock scraping upon rock as the door of the cave started opening once again.

  "It's too late!" said Mark to Katharine. "Scrooch down. Maybe they won't notice. Maybe they'll only half-see us, like the pirates that other time. It stands to reason, now we've got the rules back."

  He and Jane and Martha hid behind a pile of rich brocades. Katharine scrooched down. The robber chief stalked into the cave, followed by thirty-seven bloodthirsty henchmen. (The other two of the forty thieves had already come to no good end earlier in the story.)

  The chief took a look around the cave and smote one fist against the other. "By Allah!" he roared. "Someone has been here meddling again! See the gold pieces all every which way, and the diamonds dispersed and the rubies rearranged! Do I have to find our treasure tampered with every time I come in here? Probably that miserable Ali Baba butting in once more! But we shall give him bastinadoes and send him to Gehenna before this day is done, or know the reason why!"

  "Please, O all-highest," said one of the thieves, investigating the pile of rugs. "The magic carpet has been tampered with, too!"

  "You see?" hissed Jane to Mark, behind the pile of brocade. "It was magic. Don't you wish now we'd sat on it?"

  "I do," said Martha, "and we wouldn't be here now."

  "Shush," said Mark.

  "No matter," said the bandit chief. "He shall rue the day. Our plans are laid. Man your oil jars. Boot, saddle, to mule, and away!"

  "Oh, dear," said one of the robbers, looking at the oil jars apprehensively. "I always get so nervous in an enclosed space. I don't think I can go through with it, really I don't!"

  "You know your duty, Abdul," said the chief sternly. "Man that oil jar!"

  "At least let me practice first," said Abdul. And screwing up his courage, he marched to his appointed jar (which happened to be the one in which Katharine sat scrooched). He laid hold of the jar. He leaned over and peered within. Then he gave a cry, and leaped at least ten feet away, and fell on his face, pointing in the direction of Mecca. "Allah defend us!" he cried. "It be already occupied! It be haunted by an evil spirit!"

  "Fie!" said the bandit chief. "More likely 'tis you who be haunted by the spirit of overmuch date wine! What did this evil spirit look like?"

  "All small it was," said Abdul, "and the light shone through it."

  "You see?" whispered Mark to Jane. "They can just half-see us!"

  "And its face," continued Abdul with a shudder, "was that of a perfect fiend!"

  "Why, you!" said Katharine, within the oil jar.

  "Hark!" cried the terrified Abdul. "It speaks!"

  The chief thief paled for a moment. Then he rallied. "Fie on you for a cowardly yoghourt," he said. "Probably a mere genie. You've heard of a genie in a bottle, haven't you? Then why not a genie in an oil jar, I should like to know? This is luck! Now it will do our bidding, and we can thwart that Ali Baba all the better and probably never have to leave home at all!" He marched straight over to Katharine's hiding place. "Genie, genie," he said, "come out of your jar."

  Katharine's heart thumped. This was her big moment, and she knew it, and yet what could she do? The proper thing, of course, would be to issue forth in a cloud of smoke and grow into a figure ten feet tall, and start doing magic tricks right and left. But she couldn't even climb out, let alone issue.

  "I'm coming," she said, playing for time. "Just a minute." Once more she tried to catch hold of the slippery sides of the jar, and wished with all her

  heart that the lake wasn't worn out and the magic would aid them just once more.

  "How the jar trembles!" cried Abdul, with another shudder.

  "Hmmmmm," commented the chief, beginning to look skeptical. "A peculiar genie. It seems to be stuck. Never in a thousand and one nights have I seen the like!"

  At that moment something pressed against Katharine, and a voice spoke in her ear.

  "Move over," said the voice.

  Katharine turned as far as she could in her cramped position. Scrunched against her in the narrow jar was a figure. I shall not attempt to describe what it looked like. Suffice it to say that it was a genie.

  "Oh, good!" said Katharine. "I was just wishing something like you would turn up. Now you can fix everything. Did the turtle send you?"

  "Not directly," said the genie, "but there are certain lines of communication among us magic beings. It sent out an SAS."

  "You mean SOS," said Katharine.

  "I do not," said the genie. " 'Send A Sorcerer' is the complete expression. 'Send 0 Sorcerer' would be nonsense!"

  "How the genie mutters!" said the chief thief.

  "Who's she talking to?" hissed Jane to Mark in their hiding place.

  "More mutterings!" said the chief.

  "Now that you're here, what are you going to do?" said Katharine to the genie. "Burst out and kill them all?"

  "Certainly not," said the genie. "That would be interfering with the story. They have to go on and try to murder Ali Baba, just the way the book says. Changing that would be against the rules."

  "But maybe if you just scared them a little," said Katharine, "then maybe they'd reform, and there wouldn't have to be any killing. And there'd be thirty-eight souls saved for Paradise. I should think you'd like that. I should think it'd be worth the effort."

  "Hmmmmm," said the genie. "There may be something in what you say. Let me think it over for a minute."

  There was a pause.

  "I for one," said the bandit chief, "am getting tired of this waiting. I'm beginning to think there isn't any genie in there at all."

  "Mayhap whoever was meddling with our treasure is hiding there, instead," said one of the thirty-seven henchmen.

  "Mayhap 'tis Ali Baba himself, and now he's our prisoner," said another.

  "It didn't look like him," said Abdul, "unless he's shrunk." But the others paid him no heed.

  "Whoever it is," said the chief thief, "we shall give him a surprise. Fetch the jar with the oil and pour it in and suffocate him. That should teach him, genie or not!"

  Ready feet ran to get the jar, and ready hands raised it to the waiting brim.

  "It seems to me," said Katharine in the jar, "it's time to do something."

  "I could not agree with you more," said the genie. "Suffocate me, would they? That settles it! Watch this!"

  And a cloud of smoke enveloped him, and he sailed out of the jar in its midst and grew to at least twelve feet tall before the startled eyes of the thirty-eight thieves. And in some way that Katharine never afterwards figured out, the genie carried her along on the smoke with him. The smoke made a soft seat, though it was rather warm and steamy underneath.

  "There," said the genie, depositing Katharine safely on the floor of the cave. He turned to glare at the robbers, and even their chief quailed.

  "Well, genie," he said, trying to put up a show of bravado. "Have you come to do my bidding?"

  "I certainly have not!" said the genie. "On your knees, villains!"

  Mark and Jane and Martha ran out of their hiding place and joined Katharine, watching to see what would happen next.

  "What did I tell you? It is an ev
il spirit!" cried Abdul. "And four imps with him!"

  And he and the chief and all the bandits flung themselves flat, little heeding whether they faced Mecca or not, and rubbed their faces in the dirt in terror.

  And then and there the genie began to teach the thieves such a lesson as they had never before had.

  Invisible hands seized them and put them across invisible knees and gave them bastinadoes until they howled aloud for mercy. Thunder roared and lightning crackled. Earthquakes shook the cave, and great cracks opened in its floor. Through it all the laughter of the genie sounded with the voice of a hundred tornadoes. Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha jumped up and down and shouted with excitement.

  At last a final bolt of lightning ripped off the whole top of the cave, and the blue Arabian sky showed through from above. Rocks rolled and bounced all about, but the four children were unhurt (though many a thief was bruised black and blue).

  Then came a sudden silence like the calm after a storm. Dust settled thickly. The howls of the robbers died away to exhausted whimpers.

  "Well?" said the genie. "Now are you sorry?"

  "Yes, yes, yes," cried all thirty-eight thieves.

  "And you've reformed? And you'll never be robbers anymore? And you'll let Ali Baba alone after this?"

  "Even so! By Allah! Cross my heart!" cried the thieves.

  "Very well, then," said the genie. He turned to the four children. "Are you ready to leave?"

  "Sure," said Mark, catching up the bag of treasure.

  "This was keen," said Jane. "All this, and treasure, and a good deed, too!"

  "Brace yourselves," said the genie.

  There was a whoosh, and the cave disappeared, and once again Katharine felt the strange sensation of traveling on the genie's smoke, and the other three felt it for the first time, and the next thing the four of them knew, they felt sand and snail shells underfoot, and they were staring at their own magic lake, and it was still morning.

  When the smoke had cleared away, back in the robbers' cave, the chief robber looked around cautiously. Then he got to his feet.

  "Well?" he said to his prostrate men. "What are you all doing down there on the floor? You look ridiculous."

  The other robbers scrambled up hastily.