And Condors Danced
Read And Condors Danced Online
Authors: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Zilpha Keatley Snyder
To Larry, as always,
and to my mother, Dessa Jepson Keatley
whose vivid stories of life
in rural southern California at the turn of
the century were a vital part of my own childhood
A Biography of Zilpha Keatley Snyder
I
T WAS MIDAFTERNOON
on an unusually warm June day when Carly Hartwick made the following entry in her secret journal:
Northeast bedroom, Carlton Ranchhouse, Santa Luisa, Ventura County, California, U.S.A.—Western Hemisphere, World, Universe, Kingdom of God, on the tenth day of June in the year of Our Lord 1907.
Mehitabel Carlton Hartwick becomes invisible.
It hadn’t been easy—she had been working toward invisibleness for a long time with only partial success—but this time everything had been strangely different.
She had begun, this time, by wishing on a special wishbone. She’d tried wishbones before with no luck at all, but today she used the enormous one that she had been saving ever since Thanksgiving, and it had broken just right. Holding the broken pieces one in each hand, she stood perfectly still for a long time with her eyes closed, willing her skin and bones to disappear, to melt away, to dissolve into nothingness.
The first sign was a strange sensation, a floating feeling of lightness and transparency that grew stronger and stronger, until her feet scarcely seemed to be touching the floor. But she still wasn’t satisfied. She began to drift around and around the room, thinking of will-o’-the-wisps and gossamer and other light and airy things, all the while humming a high-pitched tune that got softer and softer until it died away to nothingness. By the time the last feathery whisper ended, she was absolutely certain. Moving slowly and softly so as not to break the spell, she pulled her journal out from under the mattress and recorded the miraculous event. Then she went out to make the final test.
The upstairs hallway of the old ranch house was dark and stuffy, a long tunnel smelling of heat and dust. Outside the door of her room the invisible Mehitabel Carlton Hartwick, commonly known as Carly, paused for only a moment before gliding through the dim light to the head of the narrow staircase, and on down to the back hall. Turning into the dining room, she crossed it silently and confidently—absolutely certain that she wouldn’t be noticed. And wouldn’t have been—even if someone had been in the room. So far so good, but next came the most difficult test—the parlor. There were people in the parlor, two very important people, Anna and Lila Hartwick, Carly’s mother and sister.
Anna Hartwick was lying on the sofa reading a book and Lila was standing near the window when Carly walked right between them and out the front door. She walked slowly and deliberately, and it was perfectly obvious that neither her mother nor her sister had any idea that she was anywhere within a hundred miles.
On the broad veranda Carly leaned against the wall and shivered with excitement. She had decided on becoming invisible on her tenth birthday just over a year ago, and since then she had tried everything without success. During that time she had used all kinds of charms and rituals and even prayers, but nothing had worked.
There had been times, of course, when she felt it had almost happened; when it really seemed that not one member of her family had seen or heard her for hours at a time. Always before it had turned out to be only her imagination; but today was different. Carly’s shoulders lifted and then fell slowly in another long-drawn-out, delicious shiver.
A familiar combination of sounds—the clop of hooves and jingle of harness—seeped through her invisible shield, and she turned toward the road. A team and wagon was coming down from the high valley. She moved out to the veranda railing for a better view. It was the Díazes’ buckboard, and old Mr. Díaz was driving the team. Welcoming another test, perhaps not a terribly difficult one, since Grandpa Díaz was known to be nearsighted, she stayed right where she was, and even raised a hand in a daring wave.
The wagon clopped and jingled by, trailing a cloud of dust, and Grandpa Díaz gave no sign that he had noticed that someone, in plain view on the veranda steps, was waving to him. She was definitely invisible.
Concentrating again, willing invisibleness with her total being, she began the return trip and the final trial. Silently, she opened the screen door and glided back into the parlor. On the red velvet fainting couch her mother continued to read, and at the window Lila went on staring up the dusty valley road. Across the room, and out the door, and down the hall, she went, a silent, unseen presence.
A moment later she swept triumphantly into the kitchen—and a voice said, “Carly dear, you’re just in time to lend me a finger.”
Nellie, Carly’s oldest sister, was at the kitchen table wrapping a parcel. She pulled the string tighter and nodded toward the spot where a pressing finger would insure a tight knot. “They’re molasses cookies for Aunt Mehitabel. Arthur’s going to run them over for me, and you know Arthur. If they’re not carefully wrapped he’ll have half of them eaten and the rest smashed before he gets out of the yard.”
Carly stood motionless, staring at her sister in dismay. Wouldn’t you just know it would be Nellie who would spoil it all? A person just couldn’t be invisible, or anything else wondrous and extraordinary around someone like Nellie—someone who insisted on seeing everything in such an ordinary way.
“Carly?” Nellie asked, still waiting with the string pulled tight. Mehitabel Carlton Hartwick, the ex-invisible person, clumped dejectedly to the table and put her finger on the knot. As Nellie’s head bent over the package, Carly rolled her eyes upward and made faces at the ceiling—tragic despair—bitter grief—and then, as she looked down at her sister’s carrotty red head, a kind of puzzled wonder. It was amazing, unbelievable actually, that three sisters could be so different. Magical, mysterious, almost invisible Mehitabel; and Lila—Lila the Fair, Lila the Lovable, Lila the Lily-Maid of Santa Luisa—and then there was Nellie.
“What is it, Carly?” Nellie finished with the string and looked up, pushing a straggle of curly red hair off her freckled forehead. “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Why did you think something was the matter?”
Nellie smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. Would you like a cookie? I saved some especially for you. They’re in the pantry.”
Carly was in the pantry eating a cookie and putting several others in her pinafore pocket when she heard a stomping of boots and a jingle of spurs. Spurs! Stuffing the rest of the cookie into her mouth, she shot out into the kitchen, and nearly collided with her brother. “Arthur,” she said through a mouthful of crumbs, “are you riding Comet to Aunt Mehitabel’s? I thought you were walking. If you’re riding Comet, may I come too?”
Arthur and Nellie laughed. “Would you mind spraying that again?” Arthur said, brushing cookie crumbs off the front of his leather vest.
Carly gulped and swallowed and said, “Could I ride to Aunt Mehitabel’s with you? I really ought to go see her, Nellie. I haven’t been since Tuesday. I promised her I’d come today.” It was the truth. She’d almost forgotten, but she had promised.
“You’ll have to walk home,” Arthur said. “I’m going on into town after I leave off the cookies.”
“I don’t mind,” Carly said. “May I go? May I, Nellie?”
“You’ll have to ask Mama.”
“Oh, why? She’ll just say to ask you. When Father isn’t here she always says to ask you.”
Nellie shook her head, frowning, as if she resented being reminded that she was in charge. It was a response that had always puzzled Carly. She herself would not have minded being in control of almost anything, she was sure of that. But Nellie had always been the one to ask when Father was away, even though Arthur and Lila were just a little younger, and Charles was even older than Nellie herself. But then Charles, Carly’s oldest brother, who was twenty-one and a grown man in some ways, just wasn’t much good at being in charge.
“Well?” Arthur asked, grinning at Nellie. “Am I to be saddled with the infant as far as Auntie’s, or not?”
Carly couldn’t help giggling. Arthur, at eighteen, was so much bigger than twenty-year-old Nellie; and his face, lean and dark and already shadowed by the beginnings of a beard, looked much older than his sister’s. Arthur got the joke. Looking down at Carly, he returned her grin and then, turning again to Nellie, he said in a high-pitched little boy’s voice, “May we go, Mummy? Will you let us go to Auntie’s?”
Nellie smiled reluctantly. “Well, let’s tell Mama you’re going, at least. She may want you to take a message to Aunt M. Come on, now.” She turned to her brother. “Wait a minute, Arthur. This won’t take long.”
In the dimly lit parlor neither Anna nor Lila seemed to have moved an inch. “Mama,” Nellie said. “Mama!” And Anna Hartwick put her finger on the page to hold her place and slowly raised her dark head—dark like Lila’s and almost as beautiful, in spite of the gray strands in her hair and the dark hollows around her eyes.
“Listen,” she said. “Isn’t this lovely? Come here, girls. Let me read this to you.” She raised the book to show the title. “It’s from
The Old Curiosity Shop.
”
Before she even began to read, Carly knew it would be about Petey. Once in a while Mama read about other things, verses about autumn colors or snow or yearning for your native land. But more often, as now, what she read was related in some way to Petey.
“‘When Death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world, and bless it.’” There was a quaver in Mama’s voice as she read, and when she raised her eyes Carly could see the gleam of tears. The innocent and young. Poor little Petey. She felt her own eyes began to fill, but remembering Arthur and Comet, she blinked hard and nudged Nellie to remind her of the business at hand.
“It’s beautiful, Mama,” Nellie said. “It really is. But just now we need to know if it’s all right if Carly goes to Aunt M.’s with Arthur. I’m sending her some cookies.”
“To Aunt M.’s?” Mama sighed and shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so. Now that school is out, I suppose Aunt Mehitabel will be expecting to have her little pet right there at Greenwood most of the time.” Mama sighed again and smiled sadly at Carly. “But isn’t it awfully warm to walk such a long way? Arthur will take the surrey, won’t he?”
“Father has the surrey,” Carly reminded her, “but Arthur’s taking me on Comet. At least on the way down and…”
Mama’s eyes had gone back to her book. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that should be all right. Give Aunt Mehitabel my love.”
“All right, Carly.” Nellie turned to go and Carly followed, glancing back over her shoulder.
Mama was reading again and Lila had gone back to the window. Against the light Lila made a slender silhouette, the high collar of her white shirtwaist emphasizing her long, graceful neck. Masses of dark hair wreathed her small head and then fell down her back in a heavy braid. Her face was turned away, but Carly knew her beautiful dark eyes would be clouded and distant. “Daydreaming again,” people said about Lila when her eyes were like that, but Carly knew it was more than that. Lila was in love. Sixteen-year-old Lila Hartwick was in love with Johnny Díaz and had been for almost as long as Carly could remember. No one else knew. It was a tragic secret love and terribly sad and exciting and Carly would never never tell anyone.