The Return of the Indian

by Lynne Reid Banks

  It slithered down to the ground and lay there, its flame chewing the bottom edge. The Algonquin licked his lips, snarling like the dog, and ran back to the central fire.

  Omri had not realized he could smell as well as see and hear. Now he smelt the smoke, the stench of burning hide. It was dry and it caught quickly. In helpless horror Omri watched the burnt area growing up beside him like the letter A edged with flame. He hardly noticed another Indian approaching from the other side with another blazing brand until suddenly, out of the daze of fear he had fallen into, Omri heard a loud bang.

  The Indian left the ground briefly. His fingers jerked open. The torch fell. Then the man did the same, dropped like a stone, and lay motionless on his back while the branch burnt harmlessly beside him.

  All the others stopped dead, their grim faces turned toward the tepee.

  The shot had come from below. Omri saw the tip of a revolver barrel poking out of a slit in the hide just under-neath him. And as the whole pack of Algonquin began to run, howling and yelling, toward the tepee, their monstrous shadows sliding along the ground ahead of them, more shots rang out, and two, then three more Indians fell.

  The others hesitated, then scattered. The fire burnt clear in the center, unattended. The fire that was eating the tepee burnt too. Inside, behind him, Omri could hear and even feel Boone frantically beating at the licking flames with something—his hat, perhaps—and cursing. But it was useless. The fire was spreading.

  Get out, Boone! Run, Boone, run into the forest, save yourself!

  Smoke flowed past the painted animal Omri was in-habiting and blinded him.

  Chapter 19

  The Terror of the Battle

  From the dark heart of the fear, Omri heard a new sound.

  He could see nothing now. But through the snapping of the flames, which were already licking at him, came a sudden deafening rattle.

  Then isolated bangs. Nearer and nearer. With no other warning, something exploded almost under him. The tepee crashed to its side. Omri felt it on top of him. The fire noise stopped and so did the smoke, though the smell was still there. The falling tepee had put the flames out. There was a sensation of heaviness, then of threshing, and he could hear Boone’s rieh cursing as he struggled to get out of the crumpled, half-burnt folds of the tent.

  In his struggles, he turned the whole thing over. Now Omri was staring up at the night sky. He could see the stars, with smoke drifting close above him, and the reflection of the central bonfire on a few pine tops.

  A cowboy boot loomed for a second against the starlight, and came down, narrowly missing Omri. Boone stood above him, astride him, firing into the surrounding darkness once, twice. “Take that, ya flea-bitten coyote!” he yelled. Then a click … Omri found he had been counting. That was the sixth, and last, bullet.

  The rattle came again, closer, and Boone flung himself down on the fallen tepee—on Omri. Omri could smell his sweat now, feel how his heart was thundering through his shirt, hear him muttering a mixture of curses and prayers … The machine-gun bullets whizzed overhead. There was the numbing crash of another hand grenade exploding somewhere near the big fire.

  Now, to the noise of explosions, were added shrieks and screams of terror, and other shouts, war cries, as Little Bear’s men descended from ambush onto the hapless Al gon quin s. Omri heard the thunder of a single pair of hoofs drumming on the ground beneath him. Boone rolled aside, and at almost the same moment the stars were blotted out as the pony cleared tepee, Boone and all in a wild leap. As it galloped on, Omri caught a glimpse of Little Bear on its back, waving a rifle above his head, riding down three fleeing Algonquins.

  The noise of the firing was now continuous and deafening. Omri could see the flash of large and small explosions in the dark. The tide of the battle swept to and fro chaotically. Twice or three times, small groups of Indians—whether friends or enemies, Omri couldn’t tell—raced across the fallen tent. One tripped over Boone and went flying. His bare foot scraped Omri’s face.

  It was the nightmare to end nightmares. Utterly powerless, unable to move or escape or fight back or even close his eyes and ears, Omri had long since stopped hoping that some miracle would save him. He had totally forgotten Patrick, forgotten his other life. He was a helpless witness to the chaos and carnage of war; he was part of it, yet not part of it. It seemed it would go on forever, or until some kind of oblivion engulfed him …

  Then, in the tenth part of a second, it ended.

  The noise, the smoke, the cries—the terror—the help-lessness. Gone …

  Silence.

  He lay curled up in darkness on something hard. He could feel his body, his wonderful, three-dimensional body … Light fell on him, and warm air. And he heard Patrick’s voice, with panic in it, calling his name.

  He lifted himself slowly. One hand clutched the edge of the chest. The other went to the right side of his face. Patrick was staring at him, aghast, as if he saw a stranger.

  “God, Omri! Are you all right?”

  Omri didn’t answer. The side of his head felt funny. He took his hand away and some black stuff was on his fingers. Something was odd about his nose, too. He felt something running out of it. He looked down. There was blood on his sweatshirt.

  “What’s happened to you? You look—your nose is bleeding, and your hair—!”

  None of that mattered. The blood and the singed and blackened hair meant nothing. They didn’t give him any pain or any fear, at least none that he would call fear now. Stiffly Omri crawled out of the chest, trying to get his mind back together, to clear it and to adjust.

  Patrick was babbling something about Omri’s mother.

  “She just came in, I couldn’t do anything, she made me go downstairs to the phone, and then she wouldn’t let me go back up again—she kept asking where you were, she delayed me, I was going crazy, she wouldn’t let me go … Omri, I’m sorry, you look terrible, as if you’d nearly been killed or something—what happened? Is it over? Should we bring the others back?”

  Omri had a pad of something pressed to his nose. His head, where the fire had licked, was beginning to sting. It was awfully hard to think. He remembered what Boone had said about Little Bear, and kept repeating to himself: Pore critter’s had a shock. Pore critter … The “poor creature” was himself.

  The others … He turned suddenly.

  “Get Boone back!” he shouted. “Not the others, but get Boone! Hurry!”

  Patrick snatched up the plastic tepee, and Boone’s figure from under it.

  “Don’t forget his hat!” Omri said idiotically. Patrick scrabbled about in the earth of the seed tray, and almost threw it after the figure and the tent. He slammed down the lid of the chest, turned the key …

  “If only he’s not dead …” breathed Omri. His head was beginning to ache piercingly from the burnt side. Patrick threw up the lid again.

  They looked down into the belly of the chest. The tepee was a crumpled wreck, twisted and blackened. Boone lay on top of it. He was very still. For one horrible moment, Omri thought a stray bullet or the blast from an explosion must have killed him. But then he raised his red head and looked up at them.

  “Is it over?” he called.

  “It’s over for us, Boone,” said Omri.

  Gendy he lifted him out.

  “Wuz you there too? Whur was ya, son?”

  “You were lying on me part of the time,” said Omri.

  Boone didn’t try to puzzle this out.

  “Dang me if’n it wuzn’t the most fearsomest thing Ah ever bin through in mah en-tire life!”

  “Me, too,” said Omri soberly.

  Patrick was staring at them. “Have I missed it?” he said. “Is it over?”

  “I don’t know,” said Omri.

  With a sudden movement, Patrick leapt into the chest.

  “What are you doing?” cried Omri, although he knew.

  “Send me back! I’ve missed everything, and you’ve seen it! Send me back—”
/>   “No.”

  “You’ve got to! It’s only fair.”

  “Never mind fair. You don’t know what you’re talking about. It was … Never mind that you missed it. You’re lucky.”

  “But—”

  “It’s no use. I wouldn’t send you now for a million pounds.”

  Patrick saw he meant it, and when he looked at Omri’s face, brave as he was he couldn’t really be sorry.

  He climbed slowly out again. “Tell me about everything,” he said.

  Omri told him, with Boone chipping in. Boone had accounted for three, possibly four Indians before he ran “plumb outa-bullets.”

  “You’d better do something about that burn,” Patrick said at the end.

  “Yeah … What, though?”

  “You’re going to have to let your mum see it sometime.”

  “How’ll I explain it? And my nosebleed?”

  Patrick said the nosebleed was nothing—“We could have had a fight.” The burn was the problem. Half the hair on that side of his head was gone and there was a big red blister.

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about explaining it now,” said Patrick. “They’ve gone out.”

  “Who?”

  “Your lot, your parents and your brothers.”

  “Is the baby-sitter here?”

  “Not yet, she’s late. Can you cope till morning?”

  Omri didn’t know. He supposed so. He was ashamed to admit how his heart had sunk when Patrick said his mother wasn’t in the house. He suddenly wanted her. He wanted to tell her everything and let her take care of it, and him. Well, he couldn’t, that was all. Just as well, perhaps.

  Boone, exhausted, flopped down in the longhouse for a sleep, after flinging back the last of the whiskey. Patrick and Omri slipped down to the next-floor bathroom and found some ointment, which Omri rubbed on his own head. The sight of himself in the mirror scared him silly. His face was white, red and black. He felt he could be doing with some whiskey himself, but he made do with an aspirin.

  “What about the others?” asked Patrick.

  “I don’t know.”

  Omri felt the whole thing had gone well beyond his control. Having seen Boone, Little Bear and Bright Stars full size, he could no longer think of them in the same way. Some part of him—until the battle—had still thought of them as “his,” not toys exacdy, but belonging to him, within his orbit. This illusion was now gone. What was happening back in the village? Whatever it was, he was responsible for it. He couldn’t avoid the realization that he had sent devastating modern weapons back in time and that they had certainly killed people. “Baddies,” of course … But who were baddies? If Patrick, a year ago, had made him a present of some other plastic Indian, it might just as well have been an Algonquin, and then the Iroquois would have been the baddies. Suddenly Omri felt the nightmare was not there, but here.

  “I think we should bring them back,” said Patrick.

  “Bring them back if you want to,” said Omri, who suddenly felt tired to death. “I’ve got to sleep.” He started back up the stairs to his room, and stopped. Not up there. He wanted … neutral ground. He turned and went down again.

  “Where are you going?” asked Patrick.

  “Down to the living room. I’m going to sleep on the sofa.”

  “What when the baby-sitter comes?”

  “Shove her in the breakfast room.” He stopped, and met Patrick’s eyes. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said. “I really can’t cope with any more.”

  “I’ll take care of everything,” said Patrick.

  Omri went on, his feet like lead weights. In the living room he didn’t even put the light on, just threw himself onto the sofa, where in two minutes he was fast asleep.

  Chapter 20

  Invasion

  He slept without dreams for two hours. Then something woke him.

  He lifted his head sharply. His mother hadn’t closed the curtains, so a little light came in from the street. He felt strange, but he saw at once where he was and remembered why he was there. He was by no means ready to wake up—so why had he?

  Then he saw there was somebody in the room.

  Coming in, rather. Through an open window, facing the front garden, which shouldn’t have been open. It was the sound of it opening, and the draught of cold night air, which had awakened him. He was peering over the arm of the sofa, which lay in deep shadow at the farthest end of the living room. He could see the clear Silhouette of a male figure stealthily putting first one leg and then the other over the sill, and ducking his head under the half-raised window frame. A bare head, which gleamed dully in the diffused lamplight from beyond the high front hedge.

  For a second, Omri thought it was an Algonquin. But there was no scalp lock on that shaven skull. It was a skinhead. No—not just one. Once in, the first figure bent and beckoned, and from the shadows outside appeared another, and then another. One by one they climbed silently into Omri’s house.

  In a flash he remembered last night (was it only last night?) when he’d come down to fetch Bright Stars something to eat. He’d seen a hairless head go past the kitchen window, and then put it from his mind. They must have been looking the place over, “casing the joint,” making plans for a time when the family would be out …

  Where was the baby-sitter?

  Normally she would be in here, watching television. But the set sat darkling in its corner. The intruders made towards it, laid hands on it. While one unplugged it and rolled up the cord, the other two lifted it between them. Would they try to take it out by the window …? No. They carried it silently to the door. The cord holder opened it and they went out.

  Omri swung his legs swiftly to the floor and stood up, holding his breath. His heartbeat was extraordinarily steady; in fact he felt calm and clear-headed. There was another door to the living room, and it was the one nearest the foot of the stairs. Moving across the carpet without a sound, he slipped out of the room and glanced toward the front door.

  It was open. The skinheads were going down the path, but they weren’t yet ready to make off. They put the television down in the front garden just behind the hedge. Omri knew they would then turn and come back for more. He took two swift steps to the stairs and raced up them silently, two at a time.

  He must phone the police.

  No, he couldn’t. The only phone was in the hall.

  He must do something. He couldn’t just let them get away with it. It was bad enough they made his life a hell in Hovel Road, without invading his territory. But the inescapable fact was that they were years older than Omri, there were three of them, they probably had knives.

  He reached his attic bedroom out of breath and opened the door as quietly as he could. He stopped. It was full of strange small lights and flickering shadows.

  The first thing he saw was Patrick, fast asleep on cushions on the floor. Then he noticed that the cupboard had been returned to the top of the chest, and so had the seed tray. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on on its much-trampled earth surface. Omri moved forward to look closer.

  An astonishing scene met his eyes.

  The ruined longhouse had been turned into a sort of scratch hospital. Clean pages evidendy torn from a notebook had been laid on the floor. In a double row, with a walkway between their feet, lay a number of wounded Indians. They appeared to have been well looked after. The ones Omri could see, through the holes in the long-house roof, were bandaged and covered with warm blankets, made of squares cut from Omri’s sports socks—he recognized the green and blue stripes on the white toweling. Bright Stars was there, her baby tied to her back, moving among them with a bucket, giving them drinks.

  At either end of the building burned a small fire of matchsticks and shavings of candlewax, each tended by an unwounded Indian. Around the fires, wrapped in glove-finger sacks, more braves lay asleep.

  Omri’s eyes went to a bright light at one end of the seed tray. The stub of the candle had been stuck into the earth and
lit. Around it, muttering and chanting, Little Bear moved in a slow sort of dance. His shadow, hugely enlarged, was flung all over the walls of Omri’s room, and the thin, weird, wailing note of his chant Struck Omri’s heart with sadness.

  Near the candle was the paddock. It was like a graveyard. Laid out on the grass were some small, still shapes, covered with squares of white cotton blotted with drops of red. Omri counted them. There were eight. Eight out of forty. And all those injured. How?—when they had ambushed the unsuspecting enemy, with far superior weapons?

  It took only a few seconds for Omri to take all this in.

  Then, out of the depths of the longhouse, bustled a little figure in blue and white, with a tall, flowing cap.

  “Well!” she exclaimed when she saw him. “Here’s a nice how do y’ do! Call this a casualty ward? I’d rather be Florence Nightingale—she had it easy! Whoever let these poor, simple fools loose with modern weapons ought to be shot themselves!”

  “What happened?” asked Omri, dry-mouthed.

  “What was bound to happen. They were shooting each other! From what I can make out from their leader, they encircled the enemy, then blasted off from all sides, never realizing how far the bullets would travel. The shots that didn’t hit an enemy were likely to hit an ally coming the other way! I’ve fished so many bullets out tonight I could do it with my eyes shut …” She bustled back to work, tutting loudly.

  Omri bent and shook Patrick awake.

  “Get up. We’ve got burglars downstairs.”

  Patrick jerked upright. “What!”

  “Skinheads. Three of them. They must think the house is empty. They’re going to clean us out. Only, they’re not, because we’re going to stop them.”

  “We are? How?”

  “Where are the guns the Indians had?”

  “They’re in the cupboard. I think they’ve damaged a lot of them.”