The Secret Country

by PAMELA DEAN

  The Barretts were very good people with whom to spend a nice, ordinary summer playing tag and hide-and-seek and red light, green light and watching television. But Ted and Laura had never spent a summer like that in their lives, and hadn’t wanted to, and didn’t like it. The Secret had grown every year with Ruth and Ellen and Patrick, and after a whole winter of deprivation, they wanted to get back to it.

  Besides, Jennifer and David were never very enthusiastic about playing anything, even when they suggested it themselves. Worse yet, they objected to snide remarks about the television shows they watched. Ted and Laura came from a family in which a television show that could wring fifteen minutes of silence from its audience was rare and valuable. The reverent attitude of Jennifer and David bewildered them.

  But they were stuck with Jennifer and David, because the right cousins had moved to Australia and Ted and Laura’s parents had gone to visit them for the summer. It cost too much to let Ted and Laura go too.

  Ted and Laura did not even have the solace of letters from their cousins. They had tried to write to them. Laura had suggested doing it in the alphabet of the Secret Country. They excitedly got out their key sheet, which contained not only English and Secret Country alphabets, but the Sorcerous Letters and the Runes of the Eight Ghostly Kings. They tackled the date and “Dear Ruth, Ellen, and Patrick,” with great satisfaction. But then they looked blankly at each other. What was there to say? They felt that the Secret was not a subject to be trusted to the mails, and they had nothing else to say that was of any interest to their cousins, or indeed to themselves. So they ceremoniously burned the unfinished letter, which gave them a melancholy sort of pleasure and got them into trouble with their aunt, and gloomed through the long days, which gave them no pleasure at all.

  And now this. Laura had broken things all the eleven years of her life, but nobody had ever been so upset about it as the Barretts were.

  Their upset this time extended only to sending Laura to the room she shared with Jennifer, and Ted to the one he had to himself. Laura, feeling certain that this was only a method of getting her and Ted out of the way until a suitable punishment could be devised, became reckless and sneaked along to Ted’s room as soon as her aunt’s footsteps went away down the stairs.

  “What’s the good of having things if they break?” she demanded of her brother.

  Ted was reading, as usual. He turned a page, and Laura sighed.

  “Mom doesn’t scream when I break something.”

  “You’ve never broken so many things before.”

  “Well,” said Laura, putting her hand flat down in the middle of his book, “I can’t help it.”

  “You could be more careful,” said Ted, pulling his book out from under her hand.

  “I am careful!”

  “So how come you break so many things?” Ted asked the book.

  “They’re always in the way,” said Laura sullenly. She did not know how she broke so many things. It was much more as if they broke themselves.

  “So are you,” said Ted. “Always.”

  “Well, I don’t have anything to do!” said Laura, furious.

  “Read,” said Ted, and went on doing so.

  “I’ve read all the ones I can. The words in the rest of them are too hard.”

  “Laurie!” yelled Jennifer from downstairs. “Mom says you can come play tag.”

  “I’m too hot!” shrieked Laura.

  The back door banged.

  “Would you read to me?” said Laura.

  “I’m in the middle of the book. You wouldn’t understand anything. You don’t like the way I read anyway.” He did not say, “Go away and leave me alone,” but Laura knew he wanted to.

  “Tag is a penance,” she said.

  “So go play.”

  Laura went resignedly downstairs and outside. It was very hot and bright and stuffy.

  There was no one in the backyard, so she started around to the front. There were lilac bushes all along one side of the house, in which they were not supposed to play. The bushes would have made a fine Green Caves for the Secret, but here it didn’t matter. As Laura came around the corner of the house, she heard people talking among the bushes.

  “What did she say?”

  “There are spies among us.”

  Laura pushed her hair away from her ears. Something in their voices was familiar to her.

  “Who are they?”

  “This place is probably bugged.” Laura moved guiltily away, but only a few steps. It was Jennifer and David talking, but she had never heard them sound like this.

  “So speak crookedly,” said Jennifer.

  “They are those who eat and sleep with us and share our bathing place.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “I fear the Imperium.”

  “Well, then, let’s tell the captain.”

  “She may be one of them.”

  “Nonsense!” said Jennifer, in her own voice.

  “She’s shown them documents,” said David.

  “She’d never betray us,” said Jennifer; once more her voice had the quality Laura had found familiar. Now she recognized it. Ted had just used it to suggest she do a penance. They were playing: not this business of running around and hiding for no reason, but a real play, with parts.

  “The documents had red covers,” said David.

  “Oh, no!” said Jennifer. “Not the plans for the black-hole gun!”

  Laura went tearing into the house and back up to Ted’s room, banging doors. She skidded on a braided rug in the upstairs hall, but caught herself on the edge of Ted’s door.

  “Ted!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They’ve got a secret too!”

  Ted put his book down. “Quit yelling. How do you know?”

  Laura told him. Ted shrugged. “Probably just some s-f show they saw on TV.” Laura hauled him down to the side of the house.

  “The crew all love her,” said Jennifer earnestly, out of the bushes. “If we put it to the vote she will go free and the spies will be able to work their will unchecked.”

  “No doubt,” said David, “we can think of—we can devise other means to rid ourselves of this—this—maggot.”

  “We could hire—” began Jennifer.

  “Hirelings talk,” said David. “We’ll have to do it ourselves.”

  Laura looked at Ted’s face and was satisfied. There was a note in David’s voice that told her a scene had just ended. Ted had heard it too. They crept around the house, eased themselves up the creaky steps of the porch, and went back to Ted’s room.

  “How can they have a secret?” demanded Laura.

  “All that tag was just for us,” said Ted. Laura looked at him and was alarmed as well as puzzled. She had not seen Ted look so worried since two summers ago, when they lost Ellen in the Thorn Forest during the Secret. They had almost had to ask their parents for help, and they would never have been able to explain what they were up to.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” said Ted now.

  “What?”

  “We couldn’t work our Secret with a lot of strange kids around.”

  Laura was horrified. “No, we couldn’t.”

  “We’ll have to keep out of their way,” said Ted.

  Laura showed her teeth at him. “It’s not fair. It’s bad enough we have to be in this place all summer and not have any Secret, without having to keep out of the way and have any fun, either.” That was more horrifying than interfering with somebody’s secret.

  “You don’t like tag anyway.”

  “But if they don’t like tag we could—”

  “Would you let them in our Secret?”

  “No!”

  “Well, then.”

  “It’s not fair. Tag’s better than nothing.”

  “Laurie,” said Ted in a way he had.

  Laura looked at the rug.

  “It won’t be so bad,” said Ted, as comfortingly as he could. “It didn’t sound like a rea
lly good Secret, you know.” Laura was not comforted. Ted hardly ever tried to comfort her, so he was no good at it; anyway, she could tell that he could not see anything to be comforting about.

  She looked at him, trying to decide whether to hit him or to start crying.

  “Look,” said Ted desperately. “Do you want to go to the library? We could find some more books you could read.”

  “All summer?”

  “We’ll think of something for all summer, okay? Right now we need something to do while we’re thinking, that’ll get us out of Dave and Jen’s way.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  They found Katie and told her what they wanted to do. She gave them a shrewd look. “Mom wanted to know if you wanted to go horseback riding this afternoon.”

  Laura shuddered.

  “Laurie’s afraid of horses,” said Ted, “and we would really rather read.”

  Katie told them where they could find the library, and where in it they could find the sort of books they wanted. She gave them Jennifer’s card, Jennifer having lost Katie’s.

  The library was an old building with many steps and many small rooms. Ted and Laura came in by a door nowhere near the checkout desk, to which they eventually had to ask directions. Then they were so excited about the books they had found that they went out the nearest door and walked several blocks, reading first paragraphs aloud to each other. Ted, as was his exasperating habit, became absorbed and began to mumble. Laura, knowing that to read while walking was a good way to fall down, put her books under her arm and surveyed the neighborhood.

  “Look at that house!” she said, pulling her brother’s arm. “It’s a secret house!”

  It was an enormous gray stone house, bigger than the library, and it had had pieces added onto it here and there, some of brick, some of wood, and some of a different gray stone than the original. It had mullioned windows. It had two towers with round windows and peaked red roofs. Around its yard was an overgrown viny hedge with a brick arch and an iron gate in it. Weeds, some as tall as Laura, and violets and dandelions grew in the yard. There were dark pines, and cedars, two hoary oaks and many maples. The sunlight falling through their leaves was dusty. The flagstone walk leading to the front door was covered with dry brown maple seeds. It was a very secret house. Laura looked at Ted, expecting him to be pleased, but he was alarmed.

  “Where are we?” he said. “We didn’t go by here on the way to the library; we’d remember.”

  A cardinal whistled somewhere in the trees. Laura felt a shock of delight. Here was a secret house, and there was the most secret of all the secret birds. All members of the Secret, even those in exile, must pay heed to cardinals, she decided.

  “It’s the Call!” she yelled at her brother, and dived into the hedge. She caught her foot in a twist of root, came down on her knees, and felt a pain in one of them that made her shriek.

  She struggled through the hedge into the tall grass on the other side, and stared at her knee. It was covered with blood. She was too impressed to shriek again.

  “Watch out,” she said to the cracking and rustling that was Ted trying to get through the hedge. “I fell on something sharp.”

  Ted wormed his way through. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s awfully bloody,” said Laura.

  “If I tie my handkerchief around it it’ll stick,” said Ted, with the certainty of experience.

  “Give it to me,” said Laura. She wiped the blood off. “Ech!” she said. “That’s a cut! Look at that!”

  “What did you fall on?”

  “It was in the hedge,” said Laura, busy with the handkerchief.

  Ted ducked back into the hedge. “I can see something shiny in here,” he said. “At least you won’t get tetanus.” He rustled about in the dead maple leaves. The cardinal sang suddenly overhead.

  “What is it, a broken bottle?” asked Laura, obliterating the last clean spot on Ted’s handkerchief.

  Ted did not answer her.

  “Hey,” said Laura.

  Ted backed out of the hedge, holding a small sword. There was no dirt on it. The hilt was black and set with blue stones. Neither Ted nor Laura knew anything about jewels, but they both agreed that the stones did not look like sapphires. Lines they could not quite make out ran down the blade. It caught a stray sunbeam and dazzled their eyes.

  “It doesn’t have any blood on it,” said Laura.

  “It’s the only thing under there.”

  “It’s so little,” said Laura. “Secret size, for a sword.”

  “Maybe it belongs to the people who live here. We should ask.”

  “Nobody lives here,” said Laura, who was afraid of strangers and wanted the sword. She put her hand out for it.

  “They could,” said Ted, pulling it out of her reach and standing up. He started for the door, which opened. A tall woman with a broom came out onto the path.

  “How came you here?” she demanded, and her voice made the fine hairs stand up on the backs of their necks. Ted dropped the sword and hauled his sister to her feet, trying to push her through the hedge. Laura, surprising herself, shoved him, and he fell through it himself.

  Laura grabbed the sword and scrambled through after him. Instead of ending up on the sidewalk, she fell into cold water, sword and all.

  CHAPTER 2

  LAURA stood up in the stream. Its gravelly bottom had taken some skin off an elbow, but at least she had not fallen on the sword. She wiped her wet hair out of her face and shook water from the sword. The sun struck the swinging blade, making a flash that brought tears to her eyes.

  She put the sword behind her and looked at where she was. The house was still there, but there was no woman at the door. There were no Ted, no street, and no other houses. The stream went down a hill and vanished into a forest, and everywhere else were green fields. It was very hot and bright, but not stuffy. Laura looked at the pattern the oak and maple leaves made against the sharp sky, and felt something poke at the back of her mind—nothing so clear as an apprehension nor so definite as a memory, but something. The leaves looked right. So, in this desolate setting, did the house. She frowned at the house. She felt, somehow, that she ought to be afraid of it.

  Laura floundered to the sandy edge of the stream and climbed up onto the grass below the hedge, dripping.

  “Ted!” she yelled through the hedge.

  No one answered.

  Laura screamed at the top of her lungs. “Ted!”

  No one answered. Laura drew in her breath to call again, and changed her mind. The hot still air made her feel as if she were shouting into a pillow. If Ted was not in the yard, he was probably not where he could hear her, and who knew what was where it could hear her?

  Thinking about that made her remember the sword. She did not think being wet could be good for it. She lifted it out of the stream, holding it at arm’s length, and stared up at the house. There were lace curtains at the windows, and she was trying to remember if there had been curtains there before, when she heard voices.

  She turned and looked across the stream. Three figures, one tall and two not, were just coming down a long slope. When they got to the bottom, there would be only a narrow flat space before they came to the stream. If they looked up from their conversation they would see her.

  Laura was under the hedge in one bound, dragging the sword with her. The thought of the woman with the broom kept her sitting in the middle of the hedge instead of going all the way into the yard. But when it seemed clear from their gestures that the three people were interested in the house, and coming to the house, she panicked and rolled into the yard, still clutching the sword.

  “Laurie!” It was Ted’s voice, from the other side of the hedge, back on the sidewalk. A shadow fell over Laura and the prickling voice of the woman said, “Stay!” Laura plunged through the hedge again, caught the sword in a tangle of branches, and wrenched at it. “Stay, in the name—” said the voice. Laura abandoned the sword and flung herself onto the sid
ewalk, skinning both knees. Ted picked her up and grabbed her by the hand, and they ran.

  After three blocks and a corner they stopped.

  “You idiot!” said Ted. “Is your leg all right?”

  “Yes, listen—”

  “It doesn’t look like it. What were you doing in there?”

  “I found a secret country!” Excitement poured into her, although while she had been in the other place she had felt only a sort of exploratory wariness.

  What she had said took much explanation before Ted so much as understood it, and before he believed it, Laura had to sit down on the curb and say passionately, “As I am a Bearer of the Secret, I am telling you the truth.”

  It helped that she was very wet, although it had not rained for three weeks and the yard of the secret house had been as dry and dusty as everywhere else. But they were left with many problems. If she really had found a secret country, they should certainly go back and see if it was their Secret Country or if it belonged to someone else. It had looked, to Laura, immensely Secret but, though right, not familiar. It could have been anybody’s, even, they supposed reluctantly, Jennifer and David’s. But there was the problem of just how to get in, and there was the woman with the broom.

  “She didn’t just want to sweep the sidewalk,” said Laura, shivering as much from the voice as from her wet clothes.

  “No,” said Ted. “While you were off falling in streams she beat the hedge with the broom and yelled.”

  “What did she say?”

  “ ‘The devil damn thee black,’ ” said Ted, not without relish, “and things like that. Never mind her. Why did you push me?”

  “You wanted to leave the sword there, and I wanted to take it.”

  “Dishonest child.”

  Laura was furious. “I bet it wasn’t hers at all!”

  “Then why was she after us with the broom?”

  “Well, it is her yard,” said Laura. She was possessed of a vague feeling that nobody could defend something so vehemently unless he had no right to it, but she could not explain this to Ted. “Anyway, if the sword is hers why does she keep it under the hedge? Why doesn’t she lock it up?”

  “Well, where is it now?”