The Enchanted Castle, E. Nesbit [books to read fiction .txt] 📗

belt of wood that cracked and rustled as they went, and the children heard them splash, in the water beyond. They heard, too, the gurgling breathing of a great beast, and knew that the dinosaurus, too, was returning to his own place.

Only Hermes had time, since one flies more swiftly than one swims, to hover above them for one moment, and to whisper with a mischievous laugh:

“In fourteen days from now, at the Temple of Strange Stones.”

“What’s the secret of the ring?” gasped Mabel.

“The ring is the heart of the magic,” said Hermes. “Ask at the moonrise on the fourteenth day, and you shall know all.”

With that he waved the snowy caduceus and rose in the air supported by his winged feet. And as he went the seven reflected moons died out and a chill wind began to blow, a grey light grew and grew, the birds stirred and twittered, and the marble slipped away from the children like a skin that shrivels in fire, and they were statues no more, but flesh and blood children as they used to be, standing knee-deep in brambles and long coarse grass. There was no smooth lawn, no marble steps, no seven-mooned fishpond. The dew lay thick on the grass and the brambles, and it was very cold.

“We ought to have gone with them,” said Mabel with chattering teeth. “We can’t swim now we’re not marble. And I suppose this is the island?”

It was⁠—and they couldn’t swim.

They knew it. One always knows those sort of things somehow without trying. For instance, you know perfectly that you can’t fly. There are some things that there is no mistake about.

The dawn grew brighter and the outlook more black every moment.

“There isn’t a boat, I suppose?” Jimmy asked.

“No,” said Mabel, “not on this side of the lake; there’s one in the boathouse, of course if you could swim there.”

“You know I can’t,” said Jimmy.

“Can’t anyone think of anything?” Gerald asked, shivering.

“When they find we’ve disappeared they’ll drag all the water for miles round,” said Jimmy hopefully, “in case we’ve fallen in and sunk to the bottom. When they come to drag this we can yell and be rescued.”

“Yes, dear, that will be nice,” was Gerald’s bitter comment.

“Don’t be so disagreeable,” said Mabel with a tone so strangely cheerful that the rest stared at her in amazement.

“The ring,” she said. “Of course we’ve only got to wish ourselves home with it. Phoebus washed it in the moon ready for the next wish.”

“You didn’t tell us about that,” said Gerald in accents of perfect good temper. “Never mind. Where is the ring?”

“You had it,” Mabel reminded Kathleen.

“I know I had,” said that child in stricken tones, “but I gave it to Psyche to look at⁠—and⁠—and she’s got it on her finger!”

Everyone tried not to be angry with Kathleen. All partly succeeded.

“If we ever get off this beastly island,” said Gerald, “I suppose you can find Psyche’s statue and get it off again?”

“No I can’t,” Mabel moaned. “I don’t know where the statue is. I’ve never seen it. It may be in Hellas, wherever that is⁠—or anywhere, for anything I know.”

No one had anything kind to say, and it is pleasant to record that nobody said anything. And now it was grey daylight, and the sky to the north was flushing in pale pink and lavender.

The boys stood moodily, hands in pockets. Mabel and Kathleen seemed to find it impossible not to cling together, and all about their legs the long grass was icy with dew.

A faint sniff and a caught breath broke the silence. “Now, look here,” said Gerald briskly, “I won’t have it. Do you hear? Snivelling’s no good at all. No, I’m not a pig. It’s for your own good. Let’s make a tour of the island. Perhaps there’s a boat hidden somewhere among the overhanging boughs.”

“How could there be?” Mabel asked.

“Someone might have left it there, I suppose,” said Gerald.

“But how would they have got off the island?”

“In another boat, of course,” said Gerald; “come on.” Downheartedly, and quite sure that there wasn’t and couldn’t be any boat, the four children started to explore the island. How often each one of them had dreamed of islands, how often wished to be stranded on one! Well, now they were. Reality is sometimes quite different from dreams, and not half so nice. It was worst of all for Mabel, whose shoes and stockings were far away on the mainland. The coarse grass and brambles were very cruel to bare legs and feet.

They stumbled through the wood to the edge of the water, but it was impossible to keep close to the edge of the island, the branches grew too thickly. There was a narrow, grassy path that wound in and out among the trees, and this they followed, dejected and mournful. Every moment made it less possible for them to hope to get back to the schoolhouse unnoticed. And if they were missed and beds found in their present unslept-in state⁠—well, there would be a row of some sort, and, as Gerald said, “Farewell to liberty!”

“Of course we can get off all right,” said Gerald. “Just all shout when we see a gardener or a keeper on the mainland. But if we do, concealment is at an end and all is absolutely up!”

“Yes,” said everyone gloomily.

“Come, buck up!” said Gerald, the spirit of the born general beginning to reawaken in him. “We shall get out of this scrape all right, as we’ve got out of others; you know we shall. See, the sun’s coming out. You feel all right and jolly now, don’t you?”

“Yes, oh yes!” said everyone, in tones of unmixed misery.

The sun was now risen, and through a deep cleft in the hills it sent a strong shaft of light straight at the island. The yellow light, almost level, struck through the stems of the trees and dazzled the children’s eyes. This, with the fact that he was not looking where he was going, as