Magic by the Lake

by Edward Eager

  "There was a genie," said Abdul dazedly. "We made a promise. We reformed."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," said the chief. "You must have been dreaming. I never saw any such thing. I never made any such promise, either. Catch me Did any of you see anything?" And he looked round at his men threateningly.

  The men were groaning and rubbing the parts of them that ached from the bastinadoes (and the falling rock). Now they stopped quickly. "Who? Us?" they said. "Certainly not. Not very likely. We never saw no such thing, neither!" And they all shook their heads solemnly.

  "Very well," said the bandit chief. "Then get to work. Tote those jars. Harness those mules!"

  And the thieves hefted up the oil jars, and got on their mules, and rode away to try to kill Ali Baba (arid get killed themselves in the process), just as though nothing had happened. Which proves that the genie was right in the first place, and it's never any use trying to interfere with stories and make them end differently, because the way they ended in the first place is the way they're supposed to end.

  And the genie was spoken to severely by his superiors, when he got back to headquarters, for forgetting it.

  Meanwhile, on the shore of the lake, four minds had but a single thought, and four forms flung themselves down on the beach, and Mark undid the drawstrings of the bag and poured the shining treasure out upon the sand.

  For an instant the bright gold and the red and white gems sparkled in the morning sun; then they seemed to suffer a change.

  "What's happening?" said Jane in alarm. "It's all sort of melting!"

  It was true. Every piece of gold and every diamond or ruby was shifting and sliding within itself, only instead of melting down to a liquid, they were flaking into dustlike grains that held their color for a moment and then went all lackluster and dead and earth-colored as they trickled away to mingle with the sands of the lake shore.

  "It's chemistry!" said Mark. "They were buried too long, and we exposed them to the air too quickly. They couldn't stand it. Their molecules gave way!"

  "It's that magic!" said Jane. "It could have held them together if it really tried. It's working against us."

  "Can't we save the pieces?" said Katharine. "Even the littlest bit of gold ought to be worth something!"

  "We'd never find them," said Mark. "They're part of the dust of ages by now."

  "There's some money, still," said Martha, pointing.

  And sure enough, the ancient Arabic coins had survived transplanting and lay looking dull and uninteresting on the beach.

  "What about them?" said Katharine. "They must be from awfully long ago. They ought to be worth a fortune by this time. Maybe they're the real treasure we're supposed to find!"

  But when Mark ran and got his rare coin catalogue from the cottage and looked them up, it turned out they were the commonest ancient Arabic coins there were, and they weren't worth anything at all hardly.

  And they weren't magic talismans, either, because the four children held each one in turn and wished, and nothing went on happening.

  "Honestly!" said Jane. "That's the last time I'll even speak to that magic!"

  "Better not say that," said Mark. "You may be more right than you know. Remember what the turtle said!"

  And they all remembered.

  "You mean it's really over?" said Katharine. "I don't believe it. It wouldn't all end like this. What would be the point? Why, we didn't learn a moral lesson, or anything! Even that would be better than nothing. So far as I can see, we might just as well not have gone at all!"

  "You found out what hiding in an oil jar is like," Martha reminded her.

  "And there was the genie," said Mark, "and flying. I guess I'm just about the only living bird-watcher who ever watched a roc. I may take up aviation when I grow up," he added thoughtfully. "I think it's here to stay."

  "The bastinadoes were lovely!" gloated Jane. "Anyway, it may all come right. That's the way that magic is. It's like some people. It never does what you want it to exactly, but it's never been really mean before. Somehow it always works out in the end."

  "I wouldn't count on it," said Mark.

  There was a silence.

  "Still," said Katharine, "we can't help hoping, can we?"

  And somehow, in the long unmagic days that followed, they couldn't.

  8. The End

  The long unmagic days that followed were horrible at first, because the four children couldn't help waiting for the third day to see if anything would happen, and then when nothing did, they couldn't help waiting for the third third day (which ought to have been twice as magic, or even cubed as much). And when nothing happened then, all hope was despaired of, but after that things began to settle down into the normal lake-y routine.

  Picnics were had, and walks were taken. Motorboat rides were even enjoyed. Mr. Smith taught Mark and Jane to paddle the canoe. Mark went on with his bird-watching and became quite knowledgeable about the least bittern. Katharine and Martha started a butterfly collection, only Katharine was always too tenderhearted and let the butterflies out of the net again after she'd caught them. (Martha, of course, knew no mercy.)

  As for swimming, it never palled, in spite of the dire irony that there they were, plashing about day after day in a lake that was full of the most spine-tingling enchantments, and yet they couldn't break through to get in touch with any of them.

  "Just think," said Jane to Mark one day as he was practicing the Australian crawl. "Nixies and Rhine maidens may be gamboling in this very same foam right now. They may be even touching us, for all we know. That frog over there might be the Frog Footman."

  "Or the Frog Prince," said Katharine.

  "Or Mr. Jeremy Fisher," said Martha.

  "Stop it," said Mark. "Let sleeping frogs lie." And for the most part they did.

  But ever and anon one of them would notice one of the others dipping his finger in the lake and muttering something, and then looking disappointed. And once Martha came upon Katharine lingering by the boathouse and whispering, "O turtle?" to the evening dews and damps.

  "Don't," said Martha. "He won't come. Or if he does," she went on, wisely for her age, "it'll be when we least expect it. He likes a surprise, I think."

  One good thing was that Mr. Smith's bookshop didn't seem to be actually failing yet. From a hint garnered here and a remark gleaned there, the four children gathered that business wasn't getting any better, but it wasn't getting any worse, either.

  And as August ripened into September, and goldenrod gilded the roadsides and the pollen drifted from the ragweed and Mark began sneezing with his annual hay fever, the thought of magic retreated deep into their minds, and the thought that lay uppermost was the thought of school.

  "Only three more days of vacation!" said Martha one sunny afternoon. "Monday's Labor Day. We drive home then."

  "O day of labor rightly named!" said Jane. "I think it's mean of them, calling it that. As if going back into bondage weren't bad enough, without rubbing it in!"

  "I'm kind of looking forward to next year," said Katharine. "We get fractions."

  "Just wait is all I can say!" said Jane.

  "What'll we do in the meantime?" said Martha. "We ought to make every second count. What'll we do today?"

  "Get out the rowboat," said Mark.

  "Boring." Jane vetoed this. "I know every inch of this shore backwards by now."

  "I wasn't thinking of this shore so much," said Mark. "I was thinking of the other one." And he pointed across the lake.

  "We're not allowed," Katharine reminded him. "They've never found bottom. We're supposed to stay in close to the edge."

  "Well?" said Mark. "We don't have to go straight across, do we? We can stay by the edge and row right around. I've always been going to do that. And I was thinking. Remember that old broken-down cottage you can see from the Willa Mae? The one that looks haunted?"

  The mention of this entrancing word was all that was needed to lend a sparkle to every eye and fleetness
to every foot. It was a race to see who could reach the boathouse first. Mark won, hotly contested by Jane. Ten minutes later, oars were plying gaily in the direction of Cold Springs.

  And soon that gracious center of civilization glided past and into their lee, and they were plowing unfamiliar waters. At least, they'd seen this coast before from the Willa Mae dozens of times, but a coast is always different and more interesting when you're up close by it and can note every stone and bush and inch of flaking paint on land.

  At first there were just more cottages to note, and laundry hanging out, and tin Lizzies parked in dooryards, and an occasional voice calling something mundane like "We ain't got no eggs." But then the cottages dwindled, and there were desolate tangled thickets, and swamps, and reedy marges, and haunts of coot and hern, as Katharine poetically put it.

  Once the rowers, who happened to be Jane and Martha at the moment, were lured off course and found themselves progressing up a stream that got narrower and narrower every minute.

  "This must be the lake's source!" said Jane. "We could follow it and dam it up and then see how long it takes the lake to dry!"

  "There's no time," said Mark. "Even if there isn't a spring in the bottom, it'd take weeks to evaporate, and we'd be gone home by then and never know. And anyway, I want to see that haunted house. Here, let me."

  And he took Martha's oar from her and backed water, and got the boat half turned around, and then they stuck on a mudbank, and time was wasted in recrimination, but at last they were headed the other way, and out into the lake again, and this time it was only a few moments before the weed-clad inlet came into view, with the dilapidated cottage crumbling on its banks.

  To beach the rowboat and leap to shore was the work of a moment, and only Martha's feet got really wet in the process. The four children scrambled up the stony ledge to where the cottage's front porch sagged from its foundation.

  "That way's too dangerous," said Mark. "Let's try around at the back."

  Around at the back the kitchen steps still held, and Mark ran up them and the others followed. They stood looking into a murky waste of dust and old newspapers and broken kitchen chairs.

  "Come, ghoulie, come, ghaestie, come long-leg-gedy beastie," said Jane, and a large spider scuttled across the floor. This made a promising start.

  They entered the house warily, Katharine and Martha hanging back and clutching at each other. But when no bloodcurdling yells or sheeted forms materialized, they gained courage, and soon were running eagerly from room to room looking for bloodstains on the floor or muffled shapes hiding in closets.

  Neither of these proved prevalent, but Martha picked up an old collar button with some dark marks on it that were probably only rust, and Katharine found a scrap of letter that said, "Dear Bert, yours received and contents noted."

  And then, as might have been expected, Mark lagged behind the others and hid in a cupboard and didn't answer when they called him, and then started shuffling along the dark hallway after them, and groaning and dragging his feet and clanking a piece of old tire chain he had found. And even though the three girls were almost sure it was Mark all along, they all cried out and gibbered and rushed screaming from the house, and Mark ran howling horribly after them until they all four collapsed breathlessly on the ground of the weedy backyard, amid the shrieks and thudding hearts of utter terror and enjoyment.

  "Ow!" said Martha, rubbing herself. "I sat down on something hard."

  "A rock, most likely," said Mark, rolling over to investigate. He cleared the encircling weeds away. Then he gulped.

  It was a loud gulp, and the others crowded round to see. There, on the ground, lay a flat stone they had seen before. It had initials carved on it. The initials were "C.C." Nobody needed to be told whose initials they were.

  "Chauncey Cutlass!" breathed Jane.

  "Is it a coincidence?" said Katharine.

  "Of course not! It couldn't be! It's it! It's the pirate treasure after all these weeks! It's that turtle! It put it there!" cried Jane.

  "Sure, don't you see?" said Mark. "This is the one way we could find buried treasure without telling about the magic, and no questions asked! Wasn't that crafty of it?"

  "Well? What are we standing here for? Let's be digging," said Katharine.

  "Wait," said Mark, and then stopped, thinking hard and fast. "Look. We want Mr. Smith to have the treasure, don't we?"

  Three heads nodded.

  "Well, then I think he'd better be the one that finds it. If we dig it up and try to give it to him, he's sure to go all noble and refuse to accept, and want to put it aside in trust funds for our college education! And we don't want that kind of thing happening!"

  "Ugh!" said Martha.

  "It would just utterly and completely ruin everything!" said Jane.

  "Exactly!" said Mark. "No. The thing is to leave it, and then lure him here tomorrow, when he's home for the weekend, and let nature take its course!"

  "Can't we even peek first?" said Katharine.

  "It would be leading us into temptation," said Mark.

  "What if somebody finds it and steals it before then?" said Jane.

  "I don't think there's much danger," said Mark. "I think it was put there specially for us. It's that last wish we made come really true after all. If anybody else happened along, I don't think it'd even exist!"

  But he smoothed the attendant weeds back over the stone, just the same.

  And regretfully the girls allowed themselves to be led away from the yard and the stone and the haunted house (though it had lost all charm by now), and the four children got into the rowboat and headed for home.

  No one watched the shore on the journey back, for all hearts burned with impatience to get to the cottage and start working on Mr. Smith. And at last their own beach came in sight, and because it hadn't been a magic adventure (strictly speaking), more time had passed than you would believe, as is usually the case when you've been enjoying yourself thoroughly, and supper was already merrily cooking, but Mr. Smith wasn't there. And their mother told them that a message had been delivered at the farm where the milk came from (for the cottage itself had no telephone). The message was that Mr. Smith had been detained in town on business and wouldn't be home till next day.

  And the next day he didn't get there till nearly dark, and it was too late to start luring him anywhere.

  "What do you suppose he's been doing?" said Martha that night, when four pajamaed forms had assembled upon the sleeping porch. "Do you suppose he's ruined and bankrupt already?"

  "He can't be," said Katharine. "Not with rescue staring him in the face, if he'd only look."

  "I still worry about what's happening to the treasure in the meantime," said Jane. "It might corrode."

  "It won't, though," said Mark. "It's all going to work out. It'll have to be tomorrow, though. It's our last day. It's our last chance."

  But when they woke up next morning, their mother was already up and heaving bedclothes off beds, and Mr. Smith was in the kitchen packing saucepans into grocery cartons, and all the four children's luring fell upon deaf ears.

  "There's just one thing for it," said Jane. "We'll just have to be useful."

  And the others privately agreed.

  And they worked so hard and fast, and dropped so many hints in between chores, that the unknowing grown-ups finally got the idea, and their mother finally said, "Everybody's being so good, I think we all deserve a last treat," just as they had willed her to.

  And though a visit to a haunted house wasn't perhaps the treat the grown-ups would have chosen, still, as Mr. Smith said, this was supposed to be the children's summer, and they ought to have the say.

  The car was packed now, and the cottage swept clean of all familiarity, except for the bathing suits still hanging on the line. Mr. Smith had decided they would drive home that night to avoid Labor Day traffic next day.

  "We'll have a picnic lunch at your haunted house, come back here for a last swim, and then have dinner at th
e hotel before we go," their mother decided.

  Five minutes later they set out, Jane and Mr. Smith leading the way dashingly in the canoe, and Mark and their mother and Katharine and Martha following in the rowboat.

  The haunted house was there waiting. And because the four children didn't want to be too obvious about the treasure, they had to pretend to be scared all over again, though it was an old story. And then they warmed to the spirit of the thing and hid in a closet and pounced out, and their mother obligingly shrieked a couple of times, and then it was time for lunch.

  The four children chose the spot for the picnic, though their mother suggested other, less weedy, places. Jane and Katharine spread the picnic tablecloth. Mark maneuvered it so Mr. Smith would sit in just the right place. Martha watched with bated breath.

  Mr. Smith sat down. Then he looked surprised. Then he looked beneath him.

  "Hmmmm," he said. "This is interesting."

  "Yes, isn't it?" said Mark unguardedly. Then he remembered and quickly bent over to look at the stone, just as though he hadn't seen it before.

  "C.C.," said Mr. Smith, reading the initials. "That must stand for old Mr. Cattermole. He used to live here. They were telling me about him at the hotel the other day."

  "No it doesn't," said Martha. "It stands for..."

  "Shush," said Katharine.

  "Well?" said Jane impatiently. "Aren't you going to dig? Aren't you going to find out what's under it?"

  "I don't suppose there's anything," said Mr. Smith. "He was a peculiar old man. Proud of anything that was his. Used to put his initials all over everything. Some people said he was a miser. They never found any money after he died, though."

  "He was? They didn't?" said all four children. Their fingers were itching. What they were itching to do shone in their eyes.

  "You might as well humor them, Hugo," said their mother, with a long-suffering sigh.

  And Mr. Smith began to dig.

  "Wasn't that clever of the turtle?" said Katharine some time later, as they lay on the beach after their last swim. "Changing the pirate's treasure into good old American ten-dollar bills right before our eyes! And so many of them!"