Half Magic (5 page)

"Caravan ahoy!" he shouted. "S 0 S! Help! Lend a hand!"

The three mangy camels and the ragged Arab altered their course and came toward them.

As they drew nearer, the four children began to wish they wouldn't. The ragged Arab's expression was crafty, and definitely unattractive. As he came to a stop before them he smiled, which made him look more unpleasant than ever.

"Bismillah!" he said.

"How!" said Martha.

"What do you think he is, an Indian?" hissed Mark, under his breath. He addressed the Arab. "Allee samee show humble servant nearest oasis chop-chop?"

"He won't understand that either—that's Chinese!" said Jane.

But the Arab seemed to comprehend.

"Western children follow Achmed," he said.

Jane refused to go.

"We can't leave the charm!" she cried. "It's our only chance to get home!"

"We might get to a place where there's Western Union. We could cable Mother collect. She might send for us," said Katharine doubtfully.

"It would cost untold millions and take
ages
!" cried Jane. "I won't budge from this spot! We'll find the magic thing if we keep looking!"

But the Arab, Achmed, seized her by the arm and propelled her, none too gently, toward the nearest camel.

"Do what he says," Mark whispered to Jane. "We have to get some water, anyway. We can always find this spot again if we leave the roller skates to mark it."

He didn't add that his fear was that the wind might bury the skates in sand before they could return. He didn't mention some other fears that were bothering him, either.

Jane allowed the Arab to help her up onto the nearest camel. Mark helped Katharine climb onto the second one, and the Arab lifted Martha onto the third. With Mark and the Arab on foot, they started away over the desert.

After a bit, Jane began to enjoy the new sensation of riding camel-back, and forgot the charm for the moment. Katharine too seemed almost happy, but the up-and-down motion made Martha seasick and she begged to be taken down.

Mark helped her off the camel and she walked along with him. But her short legs soon tired, and her feet grew sore from the hot sand burning through the thin soles of her shoes. Mark had to half-carry. her and the going was slow. They lagged a bit behind the others.

What worried Mark was that he didn't trust Achmed the Arab. Achmed had been all too eager to take the children with him, and Mark didn't like his smile.

Presently Mark's fears were confirmed. Carrie the cat seemed to be making friends with the third camel, the one Martha had been riding. She frisked along by the camel's side. The camel leaned his head down to hers. It almost looked as though they were conversing together, the way animals undoubtedly do.

A moment later Carrie ran back to Mark and Martha. Her fur was standing on end with anger and excitement.

"Foo! Idjwitz!" she hissed at Mark. "Fitzachmed fitzwieked! Fitzkidnap! Ransomowitz!"

"I was afraid of that," said Mark. "Who told you?"

"Fitzcamel!"

Martha began to cry.

"Don't worry," Mark told her. "We'll escape somehow."

But he wished he knew how. Fortunately just then the oasis came into sight, which distracted Martha's attention.

It wasn't a very big oasis—no Western Union—but there were two or three date palms and a spring of water. Everyone stopped for a welcome drink. The dates were delicious. Martha took off her shoes to cool her feet with water from the spring. There was a good deal of sand in her shoes, and as she shook it out it was Mark who first saw the round, shining, silvery thing that fell out with it.

Though he'd never had a real look at it before, he didn't need to be told what it was. His hand shot out and he caught the charm in mid-air before it could be lost again.

Katharine had seen it a second after Mark.

"I
told
you not to crawl where I was digging!" she told Martha.

Jane had seen it a second after Katharine.

"It's the charm!" she cried. "Wish us home! Here, let me!"

But the Arab, Achmed, was standing nearby, and had seen the shining thing, too. He strode forward, seized Mark by the wrist, and brought the silver charm close to his eyes, close enough to see the mystic marks on it.

The expression of his face changed. No longer did he look like a kidnapper who was planning and plotting wickedness. He looked like a righteous man who has caught a thief in his house, or even worse, in the temple of his gods. His voice was stern.

"Western child steal sacred charm," he cried. "Sacred charm lost many years. Give back!"

His hand closed on the charm but Mark's hand had closed on it first. Mark said the only thing that came into his mind.

"I wish you were half a mile away!"

And immediately, of course, Achmed the Arab was
half
of half a mile, or a
quarter
of a mile, away. The children could just see him, like a tiny dot far off on the desert sands. But the dot was coming nearer, as Achmed ran toward them again.

"Quick! Let me—I'll get us home! You don't know how!" Jane cried to Mark, but Mark waved her away. He was thinking.

"After all, maybe the charm
did
belong to his race," he said.

"It belongs to us now!" said Jane.

"Losers weepers finders keepers!" said Katharine.'

"But maybe it
was
stolen. From a temple or somewhere," said Mark, slowly. "You know how people used to be unjust to natives in the olden days. It doesn't seem fair."

The others had to agree that it didn't. All except Carrie, who was seldom troubled by noble motives.

"Fitzachmed fitzwicked!" she reminded Mark.

"After all, he
was
going to kidnap us!" agreed Martha.

"He
was
?" cried Jane and Katharine, in surprise and excitement.

"Yes, he was, but let's not go into that now," said Mark. "I'll tell you later. After all, maybe he wouldn't have if he weren't poor and downtrodden. And we're supposed to be kind to our enemies, aren't we?"

Achmed the Arab was coming nearer now. Mark waited till he was close enough for them to see his face. Then he spoke aloud a wish he had thought out very carefully.

"I wish that Achmed the Arab may have twice as much as he deserves of whatever it is that he would wish for with this charm!" Mark said.

And of course the charm, to which arithmetic was as nothing, cut the wish neatly in half and in that moment the Arab Achmed received as much as he deserved of happiness.

Suddenly there were five camels in the caravan instead of three. The camels were young and healthy instead of old and mangy. The harnesses were new and trim instead of old and worn through. The meager, empty-looking packs bulged with rich stuffs for trading.

A plump Arab lady appeared suddenly at Achmed's side, leading six plump Arab children by the hand. She smiled coyly at Achmed.

Achmed stopped short and looked at the caravan, at the lady, at the Arab children. He gave a great cry of happiness. On his face a look of peace replaced the old crafty shiftiness. He turned toward the East and fell on his face on the sand. His voice lifted in what sounded like a prayer of thanksgiving.

And it was then that Mark, still waving away the proffered help of Jane, spoke aloud the second wish he had carefully thought out.

"I wish that the four of us, and Carrie the cat, may travel in the direction of home, only twice as far."

Next thing they knew, they were all sitting on their own front steps.

The first thing they did was walk down the street to Mrs. Hudson's house. The iron dog still trembled in half-life on the lawn.

At that moment Mrs. Hudson came out of the house, her market basket on her arm. She took one look at the shaking dog.

"Earthquake! Earthquake!" she cried, and ran back inside the house.

Mark, who was getting quite good at it, made a third wish.

"I wish that this dog," he said, "may be twice as alive or twice as un-alive as it wishes to be."

Immediately the dog stopped trembling and stood still and cold as iron (which it was again).

"Wouldn't you think it'd rather have been real?" said Katharine in wonder.

"I guess iron things are happier
being
iron," said Mark, who had learned a lot in one day.

The four children now turned to the case of Carrie the cat.

"Wouldn't you like to go on talking, only plainer?" asked Martha, who had grown to enjoy her conversations with her pet.

"Notonna fitztintype," said Carrie. "Fitzsilence fitzgolden!"

The others then decided that Mark had had enough wishes for one day and they would take on this problem.

"I wish that Carrie the cat couldn't talk any of the time!" said Martha, not stopping to think it out.

"Well, you certainly messed that up," said Carrie the cat. "Now of course I can't talk half the time but the rest of the time I can talk perfectly plainly, not that I want to, of course, but here I go, talk, talk, talk, and here I
will go
for the next thirty seconds, and then thirty seconds of silence I suppose, and then talk, talk, talk again, just as though I had anything to say, which I don't, being always one for quiet meditation myself; still, duty calls; so speak the words trippingly on the tongue, only three more seconds to go now, the rest is silence, Shakespeare!"

She broke off suddenly, but only for thirty seconds. Then she began again. The children held their ears till the next silent period. Then Katharine made a hurried suggestion.

"The thing is, we want her to just mew, the way she used to," she said. "The thing is to think of a word that has 'mew' for half of it."

"
I
know!" said Jane. And she made a wish. "I wish that Carrie the cat may in future say nothing but the word 'music.'"

"Sick!" said Carrie the cat. "Sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick."

She
looked
sick.

"Better let me," said Mark. "I've had practice." He took the charm in his hand. "I wish that Carrie the cat may be exactly twice as silent as she wishes to be."

"Mew," said Carrie the cat. "Purr."

And without so much as a look of gratitude at Mark for restoring her to normalcy, she hurried off after a passing robin.

Tired but happy, the children trooped homeward. It had been a long, full day, but everything had worked out beautifully in the end.

Miss Bick met them with reproaches for having stayed out all day and missed their lunch.

"Just wait till I tell your mother!" she said.

And the children did.

Their mother looked very grave that night, when Miss Bick had told her.

"I don't want you children wandering away from the house like that again," she said to them at dinner. "As a matter of fact, you may as well know—something rather frightening has been happening. There seems to be an epidemic of kidnapping, or at least lost children. We kept getting reports at the paper all day, from different lakes and camps and places. A lot of little boys have disappeared. Mostly friends of yours, Mark, I'm afraid. Freddy Fox and Richey Gould and Michael Robinson, only there's a report he turned up halfway home and doesn't know how he got there...."

Mark choked suddenly on his milk, and turned bright red.

He signaled the others in a private way the four children had. They finished dinner as soon as they could, and gathered in Mark's room.

"It's awful!" Mark cried, as soon as the door was safely shut. "I just remembered! This morning I wished all the guys were home. Now there they all are, halfway home and wandering the countryside! I've got to fix them up!"

He took the charm from his pocket, where he'd put it after the last wish of the afternoon.

"I wish all the guys I wished home to be back twice as far as they were before I wished!" he said.

The others agreed that that ought to do it. But Mark was still worried.

"We have to be careful from now on," he said. "We don't want any more mistakes. That could have been bad."

"We'll hide it in a safe place," said Jane, "until tomorrow."

"I know where," said Katharine.