The Story of the Amulet, E. Nesbit [free ebook reader for iphone txt] 📗

“All right,” said Cyril, “we won’t. But we don’t want to sell it. We want to make it do things.”

“I suppose you can play at that as well as at anything else,” said the gentleman; “but I’m afraid the days of magic are over.”

“They aren’t really,” said Anthea earnestly. “You’d see they aren’t if I could tell you about our last summer holidays. Only I mustn’t. Thank you very much. And can you read the name?”

“Yes, I can read it.”

“Will you tell it us?”

“The name,” said the gentleman, “is Ur Hekau Setcheh.”

“Ur Hekau Setcheh,” repeated Cyril. “Thanks awfully. I do hope we haven’t taken up too much of your time.”

“Not at all,” said the gentleman. “And do let me entreat you to be very, very careful of that most valuable specimen.”

They said “Thank you” in all the different polite ways they could think of, and filed out of the door and down the stairs. Anthea was last. Halfway down to the first landing she turned and ran up again.

The door was still open, and the learned gentleman and the mummy-case were standing opposite to each other, and both looked as though they had stood like that for years.

The gentleman started when Anthea put her hand on his arm.

“I hope you won’t be cross and say it’s not my business,” she said, “but do look at your chop! Don’t you think you ought to eat it? Father forgets his dinner sometimes when he’s writing, and Mother always says I ought to remind him if she’s not at home to do it herself, because it’s so bad to miss your regular meals. So I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind my reminding you, because you don’t seem to have anyone else to do it.”

She glanced at the mummy-case; it certainly did not look as though it would ever think of reminding people of their meals.

The learned gentleman looked at her for a moment before he said⁠—

“Thank you, my dear. It was a kindly thought. No, I haven’t anyone to remind me about things like that.”

He sighed, and looked at the chop.

“It looks very nasty,” said Anthea.

“Yes,” he said, “it does. I’ll eat it immediately, before I forget.”

As he ate it he sighed more than once. Perhaps because the chop was nasty, perhaps because he longed for the charm which the children did not want to sell, perhaps because it was so long since anyone cared whether he ate his chops or forgot them.

Anthea caught the others at the stair-foot. They woke the Psammead, and it taught them exactly how to use the word of power, and to make the charm speak. I am not going to tell you how this is done, because you might try to do it. And for you any such trying would be almost sure to end in disappointment. Because in the first place it is a thousand million to one against your ever getting hold of the right sort of charm, and if you did, there would be hardly any chance at all of your finding a learned gentleman clever enough and kind enough to read the word for you.

The children and the Psammead crouched in a circle on the floor⁠—in the girls’ bedroom, because in the parlour they might have been interrupted by old Nurse’s coming in to lay the cloth for tea⁠—and the charm was put in the middle of the circle.

The sun shone splendidly outside, and the room was very light. Through the open window came the hum and rattle of London, and in the street below they could hear the voice of the milkman.

When all was ready, the Psammead signed to Anthea to say the word. And she said it.

Instantly the whole light of all the world seemed to go out. The room was dark. The world outside was dark⁠—darker than the darkest night that ever was. And all the sounds went out too, so that there was a silence deeper than any silence you have ever even dreamed of imagining. It was like being suddenly deaf and blind, only darker and quieter even than that.

But before the children had got over the sudden shock of it enough to be frightened, a faint, beautiful light began to show in the middle of the circle, and at the same moment a faint, beautiful voice began to speak. The light was too small for one to see anything by, and the voice was too small for you to hear what it said. You could just see the light and just hear the voice.

But the light grew stronger. It was greeny, like glowworms’ lamps, and it grew and grew till it was as though thousands and thousands of glowworms were signalling to their winged sweethearts from the middle of the circle. And the voice grew, not so much in loudness as in sweetness (though it grew louder, too), till it was so sweet that you wanted to cry with pleasure just at the sound of it. It was like nightingales, and the sea, and the fiddle, and the voice of your mother when you have been a long time away, and she meets you at the door when you get home.

And the voice said⁠—

“Speak. What is it that you would hear?”

I cannot tell you what language the voice used. I only know that everyone present understood it perfectly. If you come to think of it, there must be some language that everyone could understand, if we only knew what it was. Nor can I tell you how the charm spoke, nor whether it was the charm that spoke, or some presence in the charm. The children could not have told you either. Indeed, they could not look at the charm while it was speaking, because the light was too bright. They looked instead at the green radiance on the faded Kidderminster carpet at the edge of the circle. They all felt very quiet, and not inclined to ask questions or fidget with their feet.