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.
