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

and jars and platters, some of them ornamented with black and red patterns, and the most wonderful things made of flint and different sorts of stone, beads, and ornaments, and tools and weapons of all sorts and kinds.

“It is really wonderful,” said Cyril patronizingly, “when you consider that it’s all eight thousand years ago⁠—”

“I don’t understand you,” said the girl.

“It isn’t eight thousand years ago,” whispered Jane. “It’s now⁠—and that’s just what I don’t like about it. I say, do let’s get home again before anything more happens. You can see for yourselves the charm isn’t here.”

“What’s in that place in the middle?” asked Anthea, struck by a sudden thought, and pointing to the fence.

“That’s the secret sacred place,” said the girl in a whisper. “No one knows what is there. There are many walls, and inside the insidest one It is, but no one knows what It is except the headsmen.”

“I believe you know,” said Cyril, looking at her very hard.

“I’ll give you this if you’ll tell me,” said Anthea taking off a bead-ring which had already been much admired.

“Yes,” said the girl, catching eagerly at the ring. “My father is one of the heads, and I know a water charm to make him talk in his sleep. And he has spoken. I will tell you. But if they know I have told you they will kill me. In the insidest inside there is a stone box, and in it there is the Amulet. None knows whence it came. It came from very far away.”

“Have you seen it?” asked Anthea.

The girl nodded.

“Is it anything like this?” asked Jane, rashly producing the charm.

The girl’s face turned a sickly greenish-white.

“Hide it, hide it,” she whispered. “You must put it back. If they see it they will kill us all. You for taking it, and me for knowing that there was such a thing. Oh, woe⁠—woe! why did you ever come here?”

“Don’t be frightened,” said Cyril. “They shan’t know. Jane, don’t you be such a little jack-ape again⁠—that’s all. You see what will happen if you do. Now, tell me⁠—” He turned to the girl, but before he had time to speak the question there was a loud shout, and a man bounded in through the opening in the thorn-hedge.

“Many foes are upon us!” he cried. “Make ready the defences!”

His breath only served for that, and he lay panting on the ground.

“Oh, do let’s go home!” said Jane. “Look here⁠—I don’t care⁠—I will!”

She held up the charm. Fortunately all the strange, fair people were too busy to notice her. She held up the charm. And nothing happened.

“You haven’t said the word of power,” said Anthea.

Jane hastily said it⁠—and still nothing happened.

“Hold it up towards the East, you silly!” said Robert.

“Which is the East?” said Jane, dancing about in her agony of terror.

Nobody knew. So they opened the fish-bag to ask the Psammead.

And the bag had only a waterproof sheet in it.

The Psammead was gone.

“Hide the sacred thing! Hide it! Hide it!” whispered the girl.

Cyril shrugged his shoulders, and tried to look as brave as he knew he ought to feel.

“Hide it up, Pussy,” he said. “We are in for it now. We’ve just got to stay and see it out.”

V The Fight in the Village

Here was a horrible position! Four English children, whose proper date was AD 1905, and whose proper address was London, set down in Egypt in the year 6000 BC with no means whatever of getting back into their own time and place. They could not find the East, and the sun was of no use at the moment, because some officious person had once explained to Cyril that the sun did not really set in the West at all⁠—nor rise in the East either, for the matter of that.

The Psammead had crept out of the bass-bag when they were not looking and had basely deserted them.

An enemy was approaching. There would be a fight. People get killed in fights, and the idea of taking part in a fight was one that did not appeal to the children.

The man who had brought the news of the enemy still lay panting on the sand. His tongue was hanging out, long and red, like a dog’s. The people of the village were hurriedly filling the gaps in the fence with thorn-bushes from the heap that seemed to have been piled there ready for just such a need. They lifted the cluster-thorns with long poles⁠—much as men at home, nowadays, lift hay with a fork.

Jane bit her lip and tried to decide not to cry.

Robert felt in his pocket for a toy pistol and loaded it with a pink paper cap. It was his only weapon.

Cyril tightened his belt two holes.

And Anthea absently took the drooping red roses from the buttonholes of the others, bit the ends of the stalks, and set them in a pot of water that stood in the shadow by a hut door. She was always rather silly about flowers.

“Look here!” she said. “I think perhaps the Psammead is really arranging something for us. I don’t believe it would go away and leave us all alone in the Past. I’m certain it wouldn’t.”

Jane succeeded in deciding not to cry⁠—at any rate yet.

“But what can we do?” Robert asked.

“Nothing,” Cyril answered promptly, “except keep our eyes and ears open. Look! That runner chap’s getting his wind. Let’s go and hear what he’s got to say.”

The runner had risen to his knees and was sitting back on his heels. Now he stood up and spoke. He began by some respectful remarks addressed to the heads of the village. His speech got more interesting when he said⁠—

“I went out in my raft to snare ibises, and I had gone up the stream an hour’s journey. Then I set my snares and waited. And I heard the sound of many wings, and looking up, saw many herons circling in the air. And I saw that