Something kept moving and dangling in front of him. He saw it was strings – two of them. He followed them downward with his eyes and saw that they were attached to the cloth above his knees. It was these strings that were pulling his legs up in the dance. As his knees were lifted up, he saw that his legs were covered in bags of bright purple silk.
He swivelled his eyes to the side, and thought he heard a surprised gasp from the people who were grouped in front, watching. He turned his head a little to the left. His arm was in a sleeve, a full sleeve of red and gold material. There was a string round his wrist that kept up a steady pulling and releasing to make his arm move.
He felt his head jerked till it faced forward. Then he felt himself being moved from the spot – he was being made to dance to the left – then back to the right – he could have resisted, but he dared not. Because he knew, now, not only where he was, but what he was.
He was a marionette. He’d brought a string-puppet to life!
But how? How? Jerking on the ends of the strings, his head on fire with pain, he tried to think, but it didn’t make any sense!
Even when he had been part of Little Bull’s tepee, and the Algonquin warriors had been attacking the village and threatening to set the tepee on fire, Omri had not been more frightened than he was now. At least then he had had some vague idea of what was happening and where he was. He’d known that Boone and Twin Stars were somewhere close at hand. He’d known that Patrick was at the other end, that he knew what to do, that he could bring him back if only he turned the key in time.
But this was different. This was a trip he hadn’t planned or prepared himself for. Besides, he was in pain. The string for his head was fixed to his hair. Every time that string was jerked, pain ran all over his head so that he wanted to shout out.
But he mustn’t!
He did the only thing he could. Apart from holding his head up, he went limp and let the puppet-master dance him around. His thoughts were fuzzy with fear. He mustn’t give himself away, that was all he knew. That one eye-movement had nearly done it – some in the audience had noticed that he turned his eyes like someone alive. He stared to the front and let his body be jiggled and jerked and just let the fear wash through him.
The music ended. The strings made him fall forward into a bow. The audience clapped and shouted. The head-string agonisingly pulled him upright. And then he saw somebody pushing through the crowd, coming to stand in front of the low wooden stage. A big, smiling white man in a khaki safari suit with – with a – what was it called? – a solar topee on his head.
He said something in a language Omri couldn’t understand. It was something approving, praising. Then he put out his hands and took the strings above Omri’s head away from the puppeteer. There was a lot of laughter and interest in the crowd, which was gathering around now. Some dark-skinned little boys wearing only white cloths wrapped around their hips and legs were trying to touch Omri and stroke him, but the big man held him high, out of reach of their hands, and laughed, and seemed to tell them not to touch.
Omri had to force his eyes to stay wide open. But as soon as he was above the eye level of the children he was able to blink and close them for a moment against the glare and the frizzling heat.
He heard the clink of money. He risked a quick peep. He saw what must be the puppeteer, a big man in a turban in bright, showman’s clothes, bowing and smiling through his black beard. A huge hand came and fondled Omri, and the man said some words that Omri guessed were some kind of fond farewell. He realised that he had been sold to the white man in the solar topee.
The solar topee…
As the white man moved away, still holding Omri up by the strings, high above the heads of the children who followed, laughing and reaching up their hands to touch and grab him, he was dangling just level with the big man’s head. The solar topee had a mark on the top of its brim that he recognised. He had seen it, only a short while before – just before he had been dragged back through time. White dots, as if some small spots of paint had fallen on it.
And then he knew who this white man, who had bought him from the puppet master, was.
It was Matt. His own great-grandfather.
9
In the Bungalow
The little crowd of children followed, shouting and jostling, for a long way through the hot, noisy, exotic streets. Matt got tired of holding Omri-the-puppet high above his head, and handed him to a man walking behind him. He was an Indian – a servant, Omri guessed.
At last the children stopped following and the man lowered his arm and draped Omri by the strings over his shoulder. The pull of the head-string on Omri’s hair was simply agonizing and Omri thought all his hair would be pulled out before they got wherever they were going.
Mercifully, Matt decided to ride rather than walk. He hailed a sort of cart with two wheels and long shafts, but to Omri’s amazment, instead of a horse it was pulled by a man in a loincloth and bare feet, who grasped the shafts in either hand and ran along, pulling Matt through the devastating heat. The servant didn’t ride, he ran along behind, but Matt wanted to look at his purchase, so he took Omri away from the servant and laid him on the worn leather seat beside him.
The awful pulling on his hair stopped. Omri lay on his face. He felt Matt examining his costume, fingering the silk. It seemed impossible he wouldn’t notice that the ‘doll’ inside the costume was warm and alive, but he didn’t. Everything here was hot, which perhaps explained it.
The rickshaw man ran through more streets and pulled up. Matt picked Omri up – by the waist, fortunately. Omri drooped at both ends. How he wished he were back in his own time, the controller, the one in charge! What on earth was going to happen when Matt inevitably noticed that he was alive? Maybe he’d think there was something devilish about him and destroy him! That would almost certainly happen if an Indian were to discover him. Maybe Matt would take a more rational, less superstitious view. But what was rational about this?
The blazing heat abruptly cooled down as they entered a building. The light became dimmer; the windows were shuttered against the boiling sun. Omri became aware that he was sweating all over. He felt a faint swish of cool air, coming and going, and risked a peep around as he hung upside down. He saw an Indian in a white turban and baggy trousers sitting cross-legged in a corner pulling rhythmically on a rope. Omri saw that the rope led upwards to a huge swaying fan near the ceiling.
The next moment everything went wild.
He was flying through the air, and fear shot along his limbs, but the flight was short and he landed softly on a piece of furniture. Matt had tossed him a short distance into a wicker chair. Luckily it had a cushion on it.
Omri heard Matt clap his hands. A servant came in and bowed, and Matt gave him an order which, though it was in English, Omri was too wrought-up to understand. Then Matt slumped into another chair and took off the solar topee. He laid it on his knee and scowled as he examined its brim.
Omri could see him clearly. He was a handsome man, just as Jessica Charlotte had said – tall and straight with thick fair hair and rather a red face, and a blond moustache. He wore a short-sleeved khaki shirt and shorts, knee socks and lace-up shoes. Despite the heat he looked quite unrumpled, and apart from sweat stains under his arms you would think he had just got dressed.
“My great-grandfather,” thought Omri wonderingly. His fear lessened a little. He remembered everything Jessica Charlotte had written about how kind and good Matt was. But then she was in love with him. And he hadn’t been ‘good’ enough to let her go on seeing Lottie. Omri had decided when he read the Account that his great-grandfather had a hard side to him.
Omri lay very still, just as he had fallen. His arms and legs began to ache from tension. When the servant came back with a small tray on which was a bottle of whisky and a glass, Matt poured himself what Omri’s father would certainly have regarded as a stiff drink, got up with it and strolled to the other side of the room, where he stood with his ba
ck to Omri, fiddling with something. This gave Omri a chance to shift a bit in his sweaty silk clothes. Despite the fan, he was desperately hot.
What was going to happen?
He thought about what had happened.
What was the last thing before he had arrived here? They’d been in the car, the three of them, and his father had put the key into the ignition and switched on the engine.
It came upon him with the force of revelation. The little elephant had brought him back! Obviously, the key was magic after all – the original carkey that had gone back with Jessica Charlotte. How could this be possible?
Omri racked his brains. When they’d looked at her figure, the key had become part of it, held in her arms – the whole key had become plastic. It had gone back in time with her, as part of her. Could it be that that, just that, being, for the journey, part of Jessica Charlotte, had put magic into it – Jessica Charlotte’s ‘gift’ magic? Or maybe it was what his father had said – that she had ‘bent all her efforts’ on making the new key, the invisible, useless key, magic. Some of that focusing, that force of her will to satisfy their request, might have spilled on to the original key.
It must have done.
In which case, they – he and his dad – could go back to Little Bull’s time, after all!
Omri felt his heart leap. It could still happen – their great adventure! If Omri could get out of this unplanned, unscheduled, dangerous one.
Wait.
Omri’s body must, at this moment, be in the front seat of the Ford, unconscious. Wouldn’t his father notice? Wouldn’t he guess at once what had happened?
Evidently not, or he would have turned the key and brought Omri back already.
His father must think he’d just fallen asleep.
But after a while – say, a couple of hours, the time it would take to drive to Dartmoor – surely his dad would begin to wonder why Omri didn’t wake up. If he tried to wake him and couldn’t, he’d realise then. He would guess, as Omri had, that the key was magic. He would turn it in the ignition and bring him back safe. In fact, as soon as he stopped the car and switched off the engine, it would happen.
Matt turned and came back towards Omri, a small, thin cigar in one hand and his drink in the other. He stood over the chair, looking down at him. Omri, trying to contain his wild trembling, lay as still as he possibly could.
“You’re a little beauty,” said Matt. “That rogue robbed me blind, but I couldn’t resist you. Maria will adore you… and Jessie will make you perform, perhaps.” He took a sip from his glass and laid it down. “Come on, I’ll take you to meet your lady friend.”
His what?
Matt’s hand reached out.
Omri found himself praying that Matt would pick him up by the strings, even though it would hurt. If he picked his body up now, he would surely notice he was not a doll. But just as Matt’s hand touched him, someone came into the room, and he turned sharply.
It was another servant, a woman. She wore a plain green sari with the end carried over her head. She put her hands together with the fingertips to her lips and bowed her head submissively.
“Yes, Jothi, what do you want?”
“You sent for my husband, Sahib. He sent me in his place.”
“He knows he’s in trouble!”
“Yes, Sahib.”
“How could any man be so stupid as to paint a ceiling and not cover everything up underneath? Look at this.”
He strode to his original chair and picked up the solar topee.
“Look! Spots of paint! It’s ruined, I shall have to get a new one.”
“I am truly sorry, Sahib. I will try to take paint away. Please, Sahib, do not punish my husband. He is not a careless man. He is full of grief that he did this thing.” She kept bowing as she spoke and there were tears in her voice as if she were really frightened.
Omri watched Matt from his prone position on the chair. His face was redder than before, and he kept waving the solar topee angrily.
“Very well, Jothi! You take it and try to get the paint off. Then we’ll see.” His voice was stern.
The woman bowed deeply, took the solar topee with a quick, nervous movement, and ran out of the room.
Matt strode back to Omri’s chair. He scooped up the strings and swung him away from the support. The pain in his head, which he’d expected, didn’t come – the head-string was left loose and only the ones on his wrists were taut. He hung from his wrists and swung helplessly as Matt carried him briskly from the room, leaving the old man pulling patiently on the fan rope.
Omri let his head hang down and tried to subdue his fear. After a short walk along a corridor, Matt entered another large, shuttered room. It was hotter than the other; there was no fan-puller in here. It seemed to be some kind of storeroom. Big tin trunks stacked against one wall. Boxes and pieces of furniture. There was a crude bed made of wood with woven strings for a mattress. Peeping from under his hair, Omri saw something weirdly familiar lying on the bed. It was the big knapsack, only now it was clean and new with all its straps a bright tan colour, and silver buckles.
Leaning against this in a sitting position was another puppet.
It was a girl-puppet, Omri noticed, with flowing gem-coloured clothes and glittering mock jewellery. Her hair was half-hidden under a bright blue scarf with a silvery border. She had gold shoes with turned up toes. Her strings were arranged carefully above her, over the top of the knapsack.
It wasn’t till he was level with her that Omri noticed something utterly unbelievable.
He got such a shock that he made a sound, but fortunately Matt was coughing over his cheroot and didn’t hear it. He sat Omri down beside the girl-puppet and carefully draped his strings over the top of the knapsack so they wouldn’t get tangled.
“There,” he said waggishly. “You two are a pair. Sweethearts, eh? A gift for my sweetheart. Be good now!”
And he turned and walked out, leaving a fragrant trail of cheroot smoke behind him.
Omri waited till the door closed. Then he looked again at the girl-puppet at his side.
The girl-puppet at the same moment turned her head towards him. They stared at each other.
She had Gillon’s face.
10
The Girl Who Was Gillon
If Omri had for one moment expected to see Gillon, staring at him from under a girl-puppet’s headscarf – if he had stopped for a second to think it possible that his brother might have ‘come back’ with the knapsack he was leaning on in the car – he would have expected him to be looking totally terrified. Baffled. Gobsmacked.
But he wasn’t. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth was tight, and his expression was one of pure, unadulterated fury.
“I knew it,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “I knew you were behind this somehow.”
Omri’s mouth dropped open.
“I’ve been sitting here,” Gillon continued, “in this ridiculous girlie gear, just waiting for you to turn up to laugh your head off. Do you know how hard it was, just getting those stupid strings unknotted? Did you have to get one tangled up in my bloody hair? You know what, I have always known there was something really spooky going on with you. Don’t think you had me fooled. So go on, surprise me, how did you do it? Hypnosis, that’s it, isn’t it, you’ve been secretly studying hypnotism. Or it’s something to do with that cupboard. I just knew you’d use it to play some stinking trick on me one day! Well, don’t just sit there! If you could see yourself! Get those stupid strings off – you look a total dork in those harem pants and that fancy blouse! No, don’t say it, I know I look even more daft, dressed up in a skirt, or whatever this – this thing is—”
“It’s a sari,” croaked Omri. “It’s – it’s very pretty. You – you look – a real babe—”
He dissolved into hysterical laughter, tried to stand up, tripped over his leg-strings, and fell over on the rope bed so hard he got his head stuck in one of the gaps.
“Oh no – pull me
up,” he choked, trying to free himself and getting more and more helplessly enmeshed.“I’m stuck!”
Gillon stood up on the ropes, grabbed Omri by his head-string and yanked him ungently free. He clearly did not share the joke.
“When you turn off the fluence,” he said grimly, “I am going to make sure your buns get stuck in the nearest barbed-wire fence. Now jack it in and tell me what you’re playing at and how you pulled this off!”
Omri lay back, hiccuping. He wrenched the strings off his wrists and knees and struggled with the one in his hair. He tried really hard to get control but every time he looked up through his tears at Gillon, standing there in his glamorous Indian get-up with a face of thunder under the silver-bordered headscarf, he had to stifle explosions of mirth.
At last Gillon gave him a sharp kick in the behind with his turned-up-toed shoe. As he did so, his other foot slipped through a hole in the mattress and he dropped through to thigh-level like the demon king in a pantomime. Omri became completely helpless, wheezing and choking with laughter.
“Stop it, you idiot,” Gillon hissed, trying to haul himself out. “Where are we and where’s Dad and what’s the story?”
Omri heaved himself upright as well as he could, and gave Gillon a hand. “Well. It’s not a trick. I can’t explain it all now, but the fact is, we’re back in the past. That man who brought me in is our great-grandfather, Mum’s granddad. We’re in India.”
“India. Granddad. The past. Of course, I should have guessed,” said Gillon sarcastically, looking down at himself. “And is it really me inside this – this fancy dress? I mean, I haven’t turned into a girl, have I?”
Omri could feel the hysterics coming back. “Maybe you’d better check,” he wheezed.
Gillon checked, and breathed a sigh of relief. “So why am I dressed like one?”