Chapter the 9th
“Everybody down!” Nigel ordered
The choristers ducked down just in time to avoid a barrage of soccer balls from the other children in the store.
“We haven’t had all the other kids in Carelin turn against us like this before, have we?” asked Edmund.
“Not in my living memory we haven’t,” Nigel replied.
“Not in my Great Aunt’s living memory, either,” said Dennis.
Something nudged Kevin in the foot. Both train cars had followed him to the barricade, Even more remarkable, his ink set was riding on top of the circus car with the wolf
“Look out from above!” cried Nigel as a bombardment of baseballs struck the toys on the shelves above the choristers.
Kevin covered his head and eyed the shaking toys above apprehensively. A large bottle dropped down, but everything else only jiggled and stayed in place. Geoffrey caught the bottle in his hands, juggled it, and held on.
“Look at this!” Geoffrey cried.
“WOW!” Dennis exclaimed.
Inside the bottle, there was a ship with a black pirate flag flying from its mast.
“It’s a pirate ship!” said Hilary.
“That’s an intelligent observation,” said Geoffrey.
“I’ll bet this can take us on a quest!” Edmund exclaimed.
“We can discover Atlantis with it!” cried one boy.
“Or the North Pole!”
“Too cold. How about a south sea island nobody's found yet?”
“With buried treasure!”
“All right!” Nigel yelled in his commanding voice to get everybody’s attention. “It appears that this pirate ship has been given us for our quest and finding the right buried treasure is a likely quest for a pirate ship. Besides, we have already volunteered to go on a quest with the pirates. Therefore I say: Get all the pirate toys we can find!”
Some boys pulled pirate swords off the shelves and started little sword fights with them while others took kerchiefs and tied them around their heads. One boy found a hook and pretended it was a substitute hand. “Peter Pan, here I come!” he cried out.
Suddenly, more shots rang out.
The boys dived back behind their barricade. Kevin peeked through an opening and watched a group of cowboys ride unicorns into the store and shoot at toys left and right. The unicorns kicked up such a cloud of dust that boys could hardly see what they were doing. Almost as suddenly as it started, the attack stopped, but the boys still could not see the front of the store for the smoke.
“It’s awful quiet in here,” said Geoffrey quietly.
“What to you think the other kids are plotting?” Edmund.
“I—I think they’re doing their plotting where the rest of the store is,” said Hilary, his voice shaking.
“And the rest of the store is somewhere else,” added Dennis.
The smoke cleared and the boys could see that the aisles extending only a little past the barricade of toys before they faded into a patch of dark, just like the Dark Lake, right along the path where the cowboys had ridden their unicorns. In the silence, Kevin heard a soft buzzing sound. The toy caboose and the circus car with the wolf had followed him. The wooden box with his new ink set still rode on top of the caboose.
“I think we had better get out of here on that ship as soon as we can,” said Nigel. “Kevin! Can you draw us a treasure map to lead us to the buried treasure?”
“Sure!”
Kevin needed no second invitation to show off his skill, especially at a time when it was needed. He opened the wooden box as the other boys crowded round him. Not even the elegance of the wood had prepared Kevin for the pieces of fine parchment, the long quill and several little ink bottles he found there. Using the box top for a table, Kevin stretched a piece of parchment across it, opened an ink bottle and dipped the quill into it. As he worked, the train cars made slow circles around the group.
“We’ll start with the coastline,” Kevin explained as he sketched that in to give the shape of the island.
“Hey! He is good!” cried one of the boys.
Then Kevin drew in little mountains and valleys and forests and deserts, tracks for the train line, and a lighthouse on the rocky shore. Then he drew a labyrinthine path about the island that ended up close to the edge, and he marked the spot with an X where the treasure was supposed to be.
“Are you going to draw a sea monster?” asked Edmund, his eyes lighting up at the thought.
“Sure,” said Kevin. “Want a nice sea monster or a mean one?”
“How about a monster who eats up kids who shoot at crows?” Geoffrey suggested.
“Maybe we’d better have a sea monster who’s friendly, just in case,” Nigel suggested. “We’re the ones who are going to this island, not tem.”
“Okay,” said Kevin, as he sketched in an unmistakably friendly face for the monster. “Want an underwater Lost City?” asked Kevin.
“Of course!” several boys chorused.
Needing no further encouragement, Kevin sketched a number of partial ruined buildings and then wrote in broken letters: The Lost City.
“What goes in the treasure chest?” asked Kevin, “Diamonds and jewels?”
“How about gold, frankincense and myrrh?” suggested one of the boys.
“Gold will be enough for me,” said another.
“My great aunt would want us to look for a treasure chest filled with the lost light,” said Dennis.
“Thank you, Sir Dennis, for reminding us of that,” said Nigel.
“Okay,” said Kevin, “I’ll draw a treasure filled with light.”
“I still want some gold,” complained Hilary.
“How about gold pieces made of light?” suggested Geoffrey.
“Sounds good,” said Kevin.
With the eager boys watching over his shoulder, Kevin drew countless pieces of eight shining with the lost light. Once finished, he rolled up the parchment and handed it to Edmund.
“For me?”
“Yes.”
Thanks a lot,” said Edmund, his eyes glowing.
“Time for ship ahoy?” asked Geoffrey waving the bottle with the ship inside about his head.
“We need some real pirates,” Martin reminded the others.
“Good point,” said Nigel. “I think that if we can float the ship to the harbor, our national pirates will come running out of the Byrd & Tallis to join us.”
“Then it is time for ship ahoy, then, isn’t it?” said an impatient Geoffrey.
“Yes,” said Nigel, “I say the time has come.”
“Okay: SHIP AHOY!” cried Geoffrey.
He threw the bottle down on the floor, shattering the glass. Once freed from the bottle, the ship mushroomed, knocking over whole shelves and bursting through the wall and roof of the store. When it had reached its full height, the ship was tied to a dock and a plank bridged the ship’s deck with the dock. Two boys, swords in their teeth, ran up the plank.
“Let's go,” Edmund prompted Kevin. “We don’t have any time to lose.”
“Coming,” said Kevin, who was already longing to see in reality the island he had drawn. “Come on train cars.”
But to Kevin’s dismay, the train cars turned off in a different direction.
“Kevin!” called Nigel, “Where’s Sheila?”
“Oh! I forgot! We can’t leave her behind all by herself!”
Guessing that the train cars were taking him to Sheila, Kevin ran after them. They came dangerously close to the edge of what was left of the store, then turned a corner. The doll’s house that had emerged from the Dark Lake was still there. From inside the house, Kevin heard the sound of a piano The train cars rolled up to the door of the house and bumped themselves against it, prompting Kevin to forget that the house should still be much too small for him. He opened the door, and there was Sheila at the piano in the living room.
“Sheila!” Kevin cried. “We’re sailing away on a pirate ship to find buried treasure! Want to join us?”
Sheila lifted her arms off the piano and gave Kevin a frosty look.
“Is that a reason to interrupt my playing?” she asked him.
“Yes,” said Kevin. “I can’t very well leave you behind.”
“Why not? You’ve left me behind plenty of times already.”
“I’m sorry, but I came back specially for you this time. We’ve got to get on that ship. It cant’ wait for us and we’re off an a most important quest!”
“I don’t have to get on a ship just because you tell me to get on it,” Sheila retorted.
Exasperated, Kevin turned to run back to the ship, absolved of any guilt about leaving Sheila behind. But to his shock, the front wall had closed in on him and the house was rocking gently as if it were floating on water. Kevin ran to the window and looked out. All he could see were gray clouds, gray waves and darkness.
“Sheila,” said Kevin with a hard lump in his throat, “I hope you like this house.”
“I do. Why?”
“Because I think we’re trapped here.”
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Father Clement felt as if he had suddenly become a grandfather with the three children surrounding him on Main Street. They looked at the stores wide-eyed as if Milton were an enchanted town to them. Samantha stared into the picture window of a shoe store for some time and Roger was stupefied by the hardware store.
“What’s that?” Roger asked, pointing to a drill set.
“It’s a drill,” said Father Clement.
“What’s a drill?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Do you see those narrow things? You put the one of them at the end of the drill and it drives the point into the wood or whatever you’re trying to drill a hole into.”
“Hmm. Things are funny here.”
“I’m not very good at that sort of thing,” Father Clement admitted. “If we have time, you might want to ask one of the guys in the store.”
Father Clement moved on down the street, past the arcade. Roger and Samantha stopped to look at the machines and the children playing them.
“What are they doing in there?” asked Samantha.
“Playing computer games like Dungeons and Dragons,” said Father Clement.
“What’s a computer?” asked Samantha.
“It’s hard to explain,” said Father Clement.
“Do computers make pictures like these do?” asked Roger.
“Yes,” Father Clement answered.
“Those aren’t very good dragons,” sniffed Samantha.
“How do you play?” asked Roger. “Do you push a button and you get a dragon or a dungeon?”
“Something like that,” the priest replied. “I don’t play games like that myself.”
Roger sauntered in and looked over the shoulder of a boy who was playing a game, but he was rudely shoved to the side.
“Roger, we do not have time to play with poorly enchanted dragons,” Amarilla admonished her brother.
Roger shrugged and walked away with his sisters and the priest.
“Not as much fun as playing my violin, anyway” Roger muttered. “I left that in my house, and now I can’t find my house.”
As Father Clement moved along the street in the direction of the library, he kept an eye out for Mark but didn’t see him.
“Caw! Caw! Caw!” cried a boisterous teenage boy from half-way up a street lamp, just half a block ahead of Father Clement and the children.
There was quite a buzzing crowd of young people laughing at the cawing boy.
“Ah tell ye, if ye repent not of yo' sins, ye shall perish in the dahkness for evah!” cried the youth, imitating a Bible-thumping preacher. “It's tahm ye saw the laght! And there ain't no laght because ye wahk in dahkness!”
“Hear! Hear!” cried several others, and they burst out laughing.
“Is this the way people normally act in this place?” Amarilla asked.
“Not particularly,” a bemused Father Clement replied.
“Then perhaps we should stop and see if something has happened here that we should know about,” Amarilla suggested.
When Samantha and Roger nodded in agreement, the three children and the priest wandered over to the spectacle to see what was happening.
“If ye don't—Caw! Caw! Caw!” yelled the youth. “If ye don’t repent, ye shall—Caw! Caw! Caw!”
The boy clinging to the streetlight waved his arms like a bird and jumped off from the lamp's pole amid laughter from his companions.
“You can't fly like Michael!” one of the girls taunted him.
Amarilla's jaw dropped.
“Michael Bullinger Fullinger must have wings you ain't got,” added a boy.
“Could that be the Michael know?” Amarilla asked the priest.
When Father Clement nodded, Amarilla made a beeline over to where the adolescents were clustered.
“What happened?” she asked.
The teenagers looked at the girl curiously.
“You missed the show of the century, little miss-from-out-of-town,” said a sarcastic youth.
“Who was it who put on this—this show?” asked Amarilla.
“Why Michael Bullinger the Mullinger himself put on the show,” answered another boy.
“You’ll never believe what happened if you didn’t see it,” said yet another boy
“I saw it and I still don’t believe it,” said a girl.
“I will believe anything I believe should be believed,” Amarilla retorted.
“Thanks for the compliment,” said the youth, a bit taken aback by Amarilla's demeanor. “The first unbelievable thing is that Michael Bullinger suddenly got religion, and he started preaching on the street corner about how we’re all walking in darkness and we have to see the light and get saved before we all perish in darkness.”
All the kids laughed. Amarilla frowned.
“Do you mean to say that you all think this day is as bright a day as you have ever seen?” asked Amarilla.
The young people eyed Amarilla uneasily.
“You aren’t going to preach at us, too, are you?” one of them asked. “Isn’t that Father Clement’s job?”
“I don’t have time to preach to you right now,” Amarilla replied before Father Clement could say something. “At this time, I need to know what happened. What I heard you say is that Michael got himself all worked up about light and darkness. Is that right?”
“He got worked up all right,” said a girl. “I don’t know what he was high on, but he was high on something.”
“He got so worked up that he started cawing like a crow!” exclaimed a boy. “It was the funniest thing you ever heard!”
“One minute he was yelling that we’re walking in darkness and the next minute he was cawing like a crow!” added a girl.
“Then he spread his big black wings and flew away!” yelled a boy.
“He flew away?” Amarilla asked.
Father Clement gave Roger and Samantha a puzzled look but, to his surprise, the children seem to take all of this quite seriously.
“Yes! He flew away flapping his black wings!” said a boy.
“Are you telling me that Michael turned into a crow and flew away?”
Putting the question so directly caused a number of embarrassed smiles.
“Well—no—not exactly,” said a boy. “I’m sure it’s because—he got—he got himself so worked up, that he seemed to turn into a crow.”
“But he sure was cawing like a crow like crazy,” said a boy.
“Maybe we just thought he was flying when he was only running away because he sounded so much like a crow,” suggested another boy.
“Sounds like you guys think you saw Michael turn into a crow, but now you think you didn’t see Michael turn into a crow because you don’t think that could have happened,” said Samantha.
“Well, people don’t turn into crows in real life, do they?” said one of the boys.
“What do you mean, they don’t?” asked Roger. “Yelling and screaming and trying to convert everybody is as good a way to get turned into a crow as any.”
“And knowing Michael as I do,” said Amarilla, “I think it likely that he would get himself turned into a crow.”
Several of the adolescents narrowed their eyes on the three children. Father Clement wished there were a trap door in the sidewalk that could fall through.
“Who are you guys anyway?” asked one of the boys.
“Amarilla, Roger and Samantha,” Amarilla replied with dignity. “And who are you?”
“Come along, now,” Father Clement prompted the children as he saw the mockery intensifying on the faces of the young people. “We have errands to do.”
Obediently the three children followed Father Clement as he walked in the direction of the library. The jeering adolescents followed for a while, yelling catcalls at them, but lost interest when they didn’t get any more responses.
“What are we going to do now that Michael has turned into a crow?” asked Roger.
“I am afraid that we will have to let Michael take care of himself,” Amarilla answered.
“I’ll bet the dragons will take care of Michael,” Samantha suggested.
“I hope so,” said Amarilla.
“Do you think getting turned into a crow is Michael’s quest to get back the light?” asked Roger.
“That is possible,” said Amarilla.
“The library where Mark works is right here,” said Father Clement, pointing out the building.
“Hmm,” Amarilla grunted.
The children slowed down as they approached the building. They looked it over carefully as if they were looking for something invisible.
“Do you want to go inside with me?” Father Clement asked the children.
“Sure,” said Roger.
Father Clement led the way into the library. The children seemed to drink in everything they saw. Roger shrank back against Father Clement when the top of the photocopier jumped at him.
“It’s okay,” said the priest. “It’s just a device for making copies.”
“Is that all?” Roger asked. “I know how to copy anything I want.”
“Hi Marvella,” said Father Clement as he approached the desk. “Has Mark turned up?”
“No, he hasn’t,” said Marvella. “He was upstairs shelving books last I knew. You can look up there if you like.”
“Thank you. I will.”
Father Clement climbed the stairs and looked down each aisle of shelves. He saw a trolley half full of books in the middle of one aisle, but there was no sign of Mark.
“Not here?” Samantha asked.
“Not here, I’m afraid. Judging by that trolley being in the middle of this aisle, I’d say it appears that he left quite suddenly.”
“Maybe he saw something,” said Roger.
“I suppose he could have stepped into the library at Carelin from here,” said Amarilla. “Kevin said that’s what he did.”
But after patrolling the room, Father Clement and the children had to concede defeat.
“Well, no luck here,” sighed the priest.
He and the children went back downstairs and out the front door.
“Any ideas?” asked Father Clement.
Before anybody could reply, gun shots rang out a block away.
“Down!” Father Clement ordered.
The priest interposed himself between the children the source of gunfire and pushed them to the ground. People were screaming everywhere. Cautiously, Father Clement looked down the street The window of Carl’s Hardware Store was shattered and a group of cowboys on horseback were stirring up a cloud of dust in the middle of the street. Cars stopped and horns honked at the cowboys as the cloud of dust grew thicker. Then, suddenly the cowboys were gone. Only then did Father Clement realize that he thought he saw horns on the foreheads of the horses and that they were unicorns.
“All clear?” asked Roger after a tense, frozen moment.
“I think so,” said Father Clement uncertainly.
Slowly the priest rose up from his crouch and the children rose to their feet. The smoke in front of Carl’s had dissipated, leaving a damaged shop, but not one that he recognized at all. In the place of Carl’s Hardware Store was a weather-beaten shop with broken windows an a gaping hold in its sloping roof.
“Hey!” Roger cried out, “There’s Morley’s Toy Store!”
“YIPPEE!” cried Samantha with more vocal power than Father Clement thought she had.
“STOP!” Amarilla cried out when the younger children started to run toward the store.
To Father Clement’s surprise, Roger and Samantha both stopped, although they were obviously dying to get into the store. Father Clement saw for himself the battered sign that read: MORLEY’S TOY STORE. In checking out the stores on either side, there was no question that the store was in the place of Carl’s Hardware Store and that Carl’s was gone.
“We will approach this store together in an orderly way,” Amarilla ordered.
With her two siblings under control, Amarilla walked them to the store with Father Clement tagging behind. Tongues wagged in puzzled tones all up and down the block. All of the grownups shied away from the store, but some of the children were approaching it cautiously. As they approached the store, the noise of many children inside could be heard from the sidewalk. When Father Clement peered into the shop, he saw several children throwing stuffed animals and other toys around the store, and other children shooting off toy pistols and rifles. Off to the side, a man was scribbling out a list which was already making quite a pile on the floor. More disquieting than the unruly children and the damaged roof and window was a huge black shadow that filled the whole back of the store. Even Roger and Samantha held back with their sister when they saw that.
“What are we going to do about this?” asked Roger.
“First,” said Amarilla, “somebody will have to talk to those children, and I’m afraid it is going to have to be me. Second, we have to keep the Dark Lake from flooding the rest of the store.”
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A cannon shot drew further gasps from the crowd and sent Mark and Scott diving for cover under yet another buggy. A three-masted sailing ship sporting a pirate’s flag came into view at a dock at the street's end. The door of the Byrd & Tallis burst open and a gang of pirates spilled out, perfectly dressed for the part. One wore a black patch over one eye, another had a peg leg. A heavy-set pirate with a black bushy beard wore a threadbare maroon suit coat, and a parrot was perched on his shoulder. Mark cried out when he saw that this pirate and a companion had Karen Rosskill in tow.
“There she is, sure as the breeze from the sea itself!” cried one of the pirate, brandishing a wooden claw in place of a hand.
“The sea itself!” cried the parrot.
“I wonder who brought this ship here for our benefit!” said the pirate with a patch over his eye.
“Hey-ho ye hearties!” cried a pirate as he waved a pistol in the air. He shot it off as if giving an answer to the ship's cannon shot. “Hearties! Hearties!” added the parrot.
The pirates broke out into a chorus of “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum” as they swaggered down the street toward the ship, dragging Karen with them. The sound of high-pitched voices singing floated from the pirate ship in answer to the pirates’ song.
“We've got to save her!” Mark gasped as he and Scott came out from under the buggy.
“Soldiers! Help!” Scott cried out with Mark joining him.
Two of the soldiers came over to the two boys.
“How can I help you?” asked one of the soldiers.
“Those pirates—they’re on the way to their pirate ship, and they have a friend of ours in their clutches,” said Scott.
“Oh, them,” said the soldier. “As long as you don't have a gold watch on you, they won't bother you.”
“But what about her?” asked Mark.
“Who do you mean?” asked the soldier.
“That girl they’ve got with them.”
“Does she have a gold watch?” asked the soldier.
“No, but . . .”
“Then she has nothing to worry about.”
“Wait a minute!” cried the other soldier. “Is that the sound of the Carelin Boys’ Choir I hear?”
“I believe it is the sound of those singing traitors who let that crow get away,” said the first soldier.
“Charge!” yelled the sergeant.
All of the soldiers charged down the street toward the ship but, to the dismay of Mark and Scott, they ran right past the pirates and Karen and charged the ship itself. Several boys appeared at shipside and waved to the pirates and Karen and called out to them. The pirates and Karen waved back.
“We’re coming, you liver-singing hearties!” the pirate with a parrot on his shoulder yelled back.
“Those are the choirboys,” said Scott. “Maybe Karen is safe after all.”
“All members of the carelin boys’ choir are under arrest for turning their cassocks into crows and sending them out to protect the crow who was stealing our light!” proclaimed one of the soldiers.
“Come and get us!” Geoffrey yelled back from the ship.
The pirate with the parrot on his shoulder, stepped up to the two soldiers and backed them up a few paces.
“I will have you know that what those boys do with their cassocks is no business of yours, nor king’s business, nor the business of anybody else!” The pirate roared. “I strongly suggest that you let the choirboys, your national pirates, and our friend here Chief Captain Karen do our quest. That way, we can part as friends and you can do your quest if you ever deserve to get one.”
“Yes, Captain Polly,” said one of the soldier meekly.
The soldiers turned away and the pirates walked out on the dock with Karen.
“Karen!” yelled Scott. “Do you want to go with them?”
“What are you doing here?” Karen yelled back when she recognized Mark and Scott.
“We don’t know yet,” Scott answered.
“Then go into the Byrd & Tallis and try to find Shawn. He took me in there and then he ran away and I don’t know where he ended up! Don’t worry about me! I’m supposed to go with these guys.”
“Bon voyage!” Scott yelled with a wave.
“What’s this about Shawn?” Mark asked Scott. “Who is Shawn, anyway?”
“Shawn Harrison,” said Scott. “Superbrat.”
“Oh, him. Do you think we should go after him?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Scott glumly.
Before the boys could go anywhere, Mark felt something hard and blunt poke him in the back.
“You will not go into the Byrd & Tallis in pursuit of Shawn, if you know what is good for you,” said a young man.