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Omri debated with himself. He somehow felt that if he didn’t share his secret with Patrick, their friendship would be over. He didn’t want that. And besides, the thrill of showing his Indian to someone else was something he could not do without for much longer.
“Okay. Come on.”
Going home they broke the law even more, riding on the road and with Patrick on the crossbar. They went round the back way by the alley in case anyone happened to be looking out of a window.
Omri said, “He wants a fire. I suppose we can’t make one indoors.”
“You could, on a tin plate, like for indoor fireworks,” said Patrick.
Omri looked at him.
“Let’s collect some twigs.”
Patrick picked up a twig about a foot long. Omri laughed.
“That’s no good! They’ve got to be tiny twigs. Like this.” And he picked some slivers off the privet hedge.
“Does he want the fire to cook on?” asked Patrick slowly.
“Yes.”
“Then that’s no use. A fire made of those would burn out in a couple of seconds.”
Omri hadn’t thought of that.
“What you need,” said Patrick, “is a little ball of tar. That burns for ages. And you could put the twigs on top to look like a real campfire.”
“That’s a brilliant idea!”
“I know where they’ve been tarring a road, too,” said Patrick.
“Come on, let’s go.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t believe in him yet. I want to see.”
“All right. But first I have to give this stuff to my dad.”
There was a further delay when his father at first insisted on Omri filling the seed-tray with compost and planting the seeds in it then and there. But when Omri gave him the corn seed as a present he said, “Well! Thanks. Oh, all right, I can see you’re bursting to get away. You can do the planting tomorrow before school.”
Omri and Patrick rushed upstairs. At the top Omri stopped, cold. His bedroom door, which he always shut automatically, was wide open. And just inside, crouching side by side with their backs to him, were his brothers.
They were so absolutely still that Omri knew they were watching something. He couldn’t bear it. They had come into his room without his permission, and they had seen his Indian. Now they would tell everybody! His secret, his precious secret, his alone to keep or share, was a secret no more. Something broke inside him and he heard himself scream: “Get out of my room! Get out of my room!”
Both boys spun round.
“Shut up, you’ll frighten him,” said Adiel at once. “Gillon came in to look for his rat and he found it, and then he saw this absolutely fabulous little house you’ve made and he called me in to look at it.”
Omri looked at the floor. The seed-tray, with the longhouse now nearly finished, had been moved into the centre of the room. It was that they had been looking at. A quick glance all round showed no sign of Indian or pony, but Gillon’s tame white rat was on his shoulder.
“I can’t get over it,” Adiel went on. “How on earth did you do it, without using any Airfix glue or anything? It’s all done with tiny little threads, and pegs, and – look, Gillon! It’s all made of real twigs and bark. It’s absolutely terrific,” he said with such awe-struck admiration in his voice that Omri felt ashamed.
“I didn’t—” he began. But Patrick, who had been gaping at the longhouse in amazement, gave him a heavy nudge which nearly knocked him over.
“Yes,” said Omri. “Well. Would you mind pushing off now? And take the rat. You’re not to let him in here! This is my room, you know.”
“And this is my magnifying glass, you know,” echoed Gillon, but he was obviously too overcome with admiration to be angry with Omri for pinching it. He was using it now to examine the fine details of the building. “I knew you were good at making things,” he said. “But this is amazing. You must have fingers like a fairy to tie those witchy little knots. What’s that?” he asked suddenly.
They’d all heard it – a high, faint whinny coming from under the bed.
Omri was galvanized into action. At all costs he must prevent their finding out now! He flung himself on his knees and pretended to grope under the bed. “It’s nothing, only that little clockwork dolphin I got in my Christmas stocking,” he burbled. “I must have wound it up and it suddenly started clicking, you know how they do, it’s quite creepy sometimes when they suddenly start – clicking—”
By this time he’d leapt up again and was almost pushing the two older boys out of the room.
“Why are you in such a hurry to get rid of us?” asked Gillon suspiciously.
“Just go, you know you have to get out of my room when I ask you—” He could hear the pony whinnying again and it didn’t sound a bit like a dolphin.
“That sounds just like a pony,” said Adiel.
“Oh, beard it’s a pony, a tiny witchy pony under my bed!” said Omri mockingly.
At last they went, not without glancing back suspiciously several times, and Omri slammed the door, bolted it, and leant against it with closed eyes.
“Is it a pony?” whispered Patrick, agog.
Omri nodded. Then he opened his eyes, lay down again, and peered under the bed.
“Give me that torch from the chest-of-drawers.”
Patrick gave it to him and lay beside him. They peered together as the torch-beam probed the darkness.
“Crumbs!” breathed Patrick reverently. “It’s true!”
The pony was standing, seemingly alone, whinnying. When the torchlight hit him he stopped and turned his head. Omri could see a pair of leggings behind him.
“It’s all right, Little Bull, it’s me!” said Omri.
Slowly a crest of feathers, then the top of a black head, then a pair of eyes appeared over the pony’s back.
“Who they others?” he asked.
“My brothers. It’s okay, they didn’t see you.”
“Little Bull hear coming. Take pony, run, hide.”
“Good. Come on out and meet my friend Patrick.”
Little Bull jumped astride the pony and rode proudly out, wearing his new cloak and headdress. He gazed up imperiously at Patrick, who gazed back in wonder.
“Say something to him,” whispered Omri. “Say ‘How’. That’s what he’s used to.”
Patrick tried several times to say ‘How’ but his voice just came out as a squeak. Little Bull solemnly raised an arm in salute.
“Omri’s friend, Little Bull’s friend,” he said magnanimously.
Patrick swallowed. His eyes seemed in danger of popping right out of his head.
Little Bull waited politely, but when Patrick didn’t speak he rode over to the seed-tray. The boys had brought it out from behind the crate; they’d been careful, but the ramp had got moved. Omri hurried to put it back, and Little Bull rode the pony up it, dismounted and tied it by its halter to the post he had driven into the compost. Then he went calmly on with his work on his longhouse, hanging the last few tiles.
Patrick licked his lips, swallowed twice more, and croaked out, “He’s real. He’s a real live Indian.”
“I told you.”
“How did it happen?”
“Don’t ask me. Something to do with this cupboard, or maybe it’s the key – it’s very old. You lock plastic people inside, and they come alive.”
Patrick goggled at him. “You mean – it’s not only him? You can do it with any toy?”
“Only plastic ones.”
An incredulous grin spread over Patrick’s face.
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s bring loads of things to life! Whole armies—”
And he sprang towards the biscuit tins. Omri grabbed him.
“No, wait! It’s not so simple.”
Patrick, his hands already full of soldiers, was making for the cupboard. “Why not?”
“Because they’d all – don’t you see – they’d be real.”
“Real? What do you mean?”
“Little Bull isn’t a toy. He’s a real man. He really lived. Maybe he’s still – I don’t know – he’s in the middle of his life – somewhere in America in seventeen-something-or-other. He’s from the past,” Omri struggled to explain as Patrick looked blank.
“I don’t get it.”
“Listen. Little Bull has told me about his life. He’s fought in wars, and scalped people, and grown stuff to eat like marrows and stuff, and had a wife. She died. He doesn’t know how he got here but he thinks it’s magic and he accepts magic, he believes in it, he thinks I’m some kind of spirit or something. What I mean,” Omri persisted, as Patrick’s eyes strayed longingly to the cupboard, “ is that if you put all those men in there, when they came to life they’d be real men with real lives of their own, from their own times and countries, talking their own languages. You couldn’t just – set them up and make them do what you wanted them to. They’d do what they wanted to, or they might get terrified and run away or – well, one I tried it with, an old Indian, actually died of – of fright. When he saw me. Look, if you don’t believe me!” And Omri opened the cupboard.
There lay the body of the old Chief, now made of plastic, but still unmistakably dead, and not dead the way some plastic soldiers are made to look dead but the way real people look – crumpled up, empty.
Patrick picked it up, turning it in his hand. He’d put the soldiers down by now.
“This isn’t the one you bought at lunchtime?”
“Yes.”
“Crumbs.”
“You see?”
“Where’s his headdress?”
“Little Bull took it. He says he’s a Chief now. It’s made him even more bossy and – difficult than before,” said Omri, using a word his mother often used when he was insisting on having his own way.
Patrick put the dead Indian down hurriedly and wiped his hand on the seat of his jeans.
“Maybe this isn’t such fun as I thought.”
Omri considered for a moment.
“No,” he agreed soberly. “It’s not fun.”
They stared at Little Bull. He had finished the shell of the longhouse now. Taking off his headdress he tucked it under his arm, stooped, and entered through the low doorway at one end. After a moment he came out and looked up at Omri.
“Little Bull hungry,” he said. “You get deer? Bear? Moose?”
“No.”
He scowled. “I say get. Why you not get?”
“The shops are shut. Besides,” added Omri, thinking he sounded rather feeble, especially in front of Patrick, “I’m not sure I like the idea of having bears shambling about my room, or of having them killed. I’ll give you meat and a fire and you can cook it and that’ll have to do.”
Little Bull looked baffled for a moment. Then he swiftly put on the headdress, and drew himself to his full height of seven centimetres (nearly eight with the feathers). He folded his arms and glared at Omri.
“Little Bull Chief now. Chief hunts. Kills own meat. Not take meat others kill. If not hunt, lose skill with bow. For today, you give meat. Tomorrow, go shop, get bear, plass-tick. Make real. I hunt. Not here,” he added, looking up scornfully at the distant ceiling. “Out. Under sky. Now fire.”
Patrick, who had been crouching, stood up. He, too, seemed to be under Little Bull’s spell.
“I’ll go and get the tar,” he said.
“No wait a minute,” said Omri. “I’ve got another idea.”
He ran downstairs. Fortunately the living-room was empty. In the coal-scuttle beside the open fireplace was a packet of firelighters. He broke a fairly large bit off one and wrapped it in a scrap of newspaper. Then he went to the kitchen. His mother was standing at the sink peeling apples.
Omri hesitated, then went to the fridge.
“Don’t eat now, Omri, it’s nearly suppertime.”
“Just a tiny bit,” he said.
There was a lovely chunk of raw meat on a plate. Omri sniffed his fingers, wiped them hard on his sweater to get the stink of the firelighter off them, then took a big carving-knife from the drawer and, with an anxious glance at his mother’s back, began sawing a corner off the meat.
