part of a painting on the side of an Indian tent.”
“A wigwam.”
“No, a wigwam’s something different. This was a tepee. They have animal designs painted on them. I think I was a beaver… or maybe a porcupine.” Omri had glanced anxiously at his father, half-expecting him to laugh, but his face was entirely serious. “Animals are very important to Indians. Not just to hunt. I’ve read about it. Each clan – d’you know what a clan is?” His father had nodded, frowning. “Each clan has its own clan-animal. Little Bull’s clan-animal must be an elk, he’s named for that kind of bull, they didn’t hunt buffalo. I expect he got it in a dream – dreams are well important to Indians.”
“Yes. I think I knew that.”
“Anyway, I was sort of stuck there on the outside of the tepee and then there was an attack by an enemy tribe. They set the tepee on fire and I was nearly burnt to death,” he concluded, as carelessly as if such an adventure happened to him all the time.
His father stopped in his tracks. “My God! That time we came home and you had a burn on the side of your head! You made up some cock-and-bull story about a bonfire—”
“Right! Luckily Patrick turned the key and brought me back just in time. It hurt like hell,” Omri remembered.
His father stood on the cliff path with the rough grey Channel behind him, staring at Omri. “This is dangerous,” he said with an air of discovery.
“Yes it is. It can be.”
“I thought it was… just the most wonderful fun,” said his father.
“That’s exactly what I thought, at first. It’s not fun. Not always. It’s – I mean, it’s real people.”
“Yes. Of course I realised that when I saw them. I just… I suppose I just—”
“It’s natural, Dad. You have to kind of get into it. But things really happen. You do have to – to think ahead. You can’t just – do things.”
“On impulse.”
“Right.”
“Yes. I see that. Anything could happen. Obviously you mustn’t change anything back there.”
“No,” said Omri with great feeling. He didn’t want to even think about the time he had feared he’d changed something so drastically that he, himself, might never have been born.
They walked on slowly. Then his father said, “But your wooden chest was destroyed in that freak storm. So what could we use?”
Omri thought of telling his dad that the storm, too, had happened because of the key. But he had a strange feeling of wanting to protect him from too much knowledge. He might scare him and then he would back off. Not that his dad was a coward, but you wouldn’t have to be one to be scared of magic that could bring a hurricane all the way from the Texas of a hundred years ago, to rampage over England destroying everything in its path…
So he just said, “Well, it has to be big enough to hold us both. And it has to have a keyhole for the key.”
“But if we were both in it together, who’d turn the key?”
“Yes. That’s the problem we had before. Patrick and I could never go back at the same time.”
They had tramped on for a while in silence, and at last his dad said, “This is very difficult to get your mind around.”
Omri knew it. But Little Bull’s urgent looks and words pressed on his brain.
His dad was frowning. “We need to do some research. Read up on the history. Find out what was happening back then.”
“What is happening.”
“What is happening…” He was furrowing his brows. He looked remarkably like Omri, when he did that. “It seems as if it’s all happening at once. History… time… in layers, kind of. When we ‘go back’, if we find a way to, we’ll just – drop through a number of layers and be back in Little Bull’s time.”
Omri thought that was a good way of putting it.
“But how can we be sure of getting to the right layer?” asked his father.
“That’s easy. We have to either go back with Little Bull, or with something of his, something that belongs to the right time and place. The magic latches on to that.”
“Like a kind of ticket to the right destination.”
They had walked on, frowning, thinking.
Little Bull was no longer with them. He, Twin Stars and their baby son, Tall Bear, as well as Matron and Fickits, had all been sent back through the cupboard as soon as they’d had a talk, right after meeting Omri’s father. They’d all been anxious to return to their own time, especially Matron – a superior sort of nurse, who had been in the middle of her rounds at St Thomas’s Hospital in the London of 1941. The bombing of the city in World War Two had begun, and she was frantically busy. Sergeant Fickits had just been preparing for a drilling session with his trainees in his time, which was back in the nineteen-fifties.
As for the Indians, after a short, tense speech by Little Bull (during which Twin Stars allowed Omri to hold the baby, Tall Bear, in the palm of his hand, a sensation so entrancing that Omri had frankly not listened very carefully) they had asked to be sent back, too, but with the proviso that Omri and his father should make every effort to follow them soon.
“I need counsel,” Little Bull had said forcefully. “English change toward Iroquois friends. Many years Iroquois fight at side of English against French. Many warriors die. Now they turn from us. Our people do not understand, need chiefs to tell what best to do.” He shook his head, scowling. “Our need is for English man. Wise man, explain what is in English heads,” he said, staring at Omri’s father challengingly.
Next day on the cliff top, Omri’s father said, “I know something about what the Europeans did to the Indians. It’s not a pretty story… I don’t know what we can do to help, but if our damned ancestors are up to some tricks, which they probably are – were – are, the least we can do is find a way to get in there and give the Indians a hand.”
And now here they all were at the supper table, and Omri’s dad was gassing on about going camping. What was he up to?
Everyone was talking. Their mother was on her feet again collecting plates with a great clatter, saying that if there really was a camping holiday in prospect, they’d better do some serious planning, not go at it half-cocked like last time. Gillon was already leafing through the Yellow Pages looking for suppliers of camping equipment, and Adiel was asking if they could go as far as Dartmoor, where they could really feel they were away from civilisation. Their dad was giving every impression of being absolutely serious about the whole project. Only Omri hadn’t joined in.
“When could we do it?” said Adiel, who seemed quite fired up now.
“Oh, I thought in the half-term holiday,” said their father.
“Great! Let’s
