Adiel’s especially.
“You know perfectly well it’s brilliant. How on earth did you dream all that up? Coming from another time and all that? It’s so well worked-out, so… I dunno. You actually had me believing in it. And working in all those real parts, about the family. Blimey. I mean it was terrific. I… now don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t quite credit that you made it all up.”
After a pause, Omri said, “What do you mean? That you think I nicked it from a book? Because I didn’t.”
“It’s entirely original?”
Omri glanced at him. “Original? Yes. That’s what it is. It’s original.”
“Well, congratulations anyway. I think it’s fabulous.” They stared at the screen for a while and then he added, “You’d better go and talk to Mum. She’s sobbing her eyes out.”
Omri reluctantly went in search of his mother, and found her in the conservatory at the back of the house watering her plants. Not with tears – to his great relief she was not crying now – but she gave him a rather misty smile and said, “I read the story, Omri. It’s utterly amazing. No wonder it won. You’re the darkest little horse I ever knew, and I love you.” She hugged him. He submitted briefly, then politely extricated himself.
“When’s supper?”
“Usual time.”
He was just turning to go when he stopped and looked at her again. Something was missing from her general appearance. Then he saw what it was, and his heart missed a beat.
“Mum! Where’s the key?”
Her hand went to her neck.
“Oh… I took it off this morning when I washed my hair. It’s in the upstairs bathroom.”
Omri didn’t mean to run, but he couldn’t help it. He had to see the key, to be sure it wasn’t lost. He pelted up the stairs and into his parents’ bathroom. The key was there. He saw it as soon as he went in, lying on the ledge beside the basin with its silver chain coiled around it.
He picked it up. It was the first time he’d held it for a year. It felt colder and lighter than he remembered. Its twisted top and complicated lock-part clicked into place in some memory-pattern. And something else clicked at the same time, something which had been hovering in his mind, undefined, since he’d read the letter.
His story was original. Adiel had relieved his mind when he’d used that word. Even if you didn’t make a story up, if you had the experience, and you wrote about it, it was original. So he hadn’t cheated. But the story wasn’t only his. It also belonged to the little men – to Little Bull, and Boone, and even to Tommy, the World War One soldier. (It belonged to Patrick, too, but if Patrick had decided to deny it ever happened, then he’d given up his rights in it.)
And suddenly Omri realized, as he looked at the key, that his triumph wouldn’t really be complete until he’d shared it. Not just with his parents and brothers, or with the kids at school. No prize, no party, could be as good as what he was thinking about now. This was his reason – his excuse – to do what he’d been yearning to do ever since that moment when the cupboard door closed and transformed his friends back into plastic. Only with Little Bull and Boone could he share the secret behind his story, the most exciting part of all – that it was true.
He turned, went out of the bathroom and up the remaining stairs to his attic room.
Not for long, he was thinking. I won’t bring them back for long. Not long enough to cause problems. Just long enough to have a good talk. To find out how they are.
Maybe Twin Stars had had a baby by now – a papoose! What fun if she brought it with her, though it would be almost too tiny to see. Little Bull had made himself a chief while he was with Omri, but when he returned to his own place, his father might still be alive. Little Bull wouldn’t like being an ordinary brave again! And Boone – the ‘crying cowboy’ with a talent for art, a deep dislike of washing, and a heavy thirst… It made Omri grin to think of him. Writing about the little men and their adventures had made them so clear in his mind that it hardly seemed necessary to do what he was going to do.
With hands that shook, Omri probed into the depths of the chest till he found the box-within-a-box-within-a-box. He eased it out and closed the lid of the chest and put the boxes on top. Reverently he untied the string on the largest box, opened it, took out the next, and repeated the operation.
In the last box, carefully wrapped in cotton-wool, was the plastic group consisting of a brown pony, an Indian brave, and an Indian girl in a red dress. The brave’s left hand was upraised in farewell, his other arm circled the girl’s waist and held the rope-rein. The girl, her long brown legs hanging on each side of the pony’s withers, had her hands buried in its mane. The pony’s head was alertly raised, its ears almost meeting above its forelock, its feet braced. Omri felt himself quivering all over as he stood the tiny figures on his hand and stared at them.
“You’re coming back,” he whispered – as if plastic could hear. But they wouldn’t be plastic long!
The cupboard was ready. Omri stood the figures, not on its shelf but on its metal floor. Then he took a deep, deep breath as if he were going to dive into a cold, uncertain sea. He fitted the key into the lock, closed the door, and turned it.
Let it still work. Let it…
He barely had time to think his thought before he heard the tiny, familiar sound – minute, unshod hooves drumming and pawing on the metal!
Omri let his breath out in a rush. His heart was thumping and his right hand shook.
His fingers were still round the key. In a second he had turned it back and opened the mirrored door. And there they were…
No. No!
Omri’s fists clenched. There was something terribly wrong. The three figures were there, all right. The details of life, which the dull-surfaced plastic blurred, were there again. The shine on the pony’s coat, the brilliance of the red dress, the warm sheen of brown, living skin. But…
The pony was right enough. He was prancing and stamping his hooves, fretting his head against the rope. As Omri opened the door and the light fell on him, he pricked his ears again and whickered nervously. On his back sat Twin Stars. But she was no longer in front. She sat back, almost on the pony’s haunches. And before her, but lying face-down across the pony’s back, was a limp, motionless form.
It was Little Bull. Omri knew it, although he couldn’t see his face. His head and arms hung down on one side of the horse and his legs on the other. His buckskin leggings were caked with earth and blood. Omri, against his will, forced himself to peer closer, and saw to his utter horror where the blood had come from. There were two bullet-holes, almost too small to see, high up on his back.
Omri’s mouth was wide open with shock. He looked at Twin
