could play and leave a total mess, and that was what they always did, only clearing spaces when they needed them for a new layout or for some special game. And their way of clearing was just to shove things aside into ever-more-chaotic heaps.
Underneath the heaps were all the myriad little oddments which were small enough to filter through the bigger things – marbles, wheels of Matchbox cars, bits of Lego, small tools, parachute men, cards, and so on and so on, plus all sorts of fragments which could have been almost anything. At first they just raked through everything. But after a while Omri realized that they would have to clear up systematically. Otherwise it was like the old saying about looking for a needle in a haystack.
He found some boxes and they began sorting things into them – Lego here, parts of games there, water-pistols, tricks and novelties in another. Bigger things they stacked neatly on to what his father rather sarcastically called ‘the shelves provided’, which normally stood empty since everything was on the floor.
In an amazingly short time the floor was clear except for a few odd things they hadn’t found homes for, and a great deal of mud, dust and sand.
“Where did all this come from?” asked Patrick.
“Oh, Gillon brought up boxes of it from the garden to make a desert scene,” said Omri. “Months ago. We might as well sweep it up.” He looked round. Despite his anxiety about the key, he felt a certain pride. The room looked entirely different – there was real playing-space now.
He went downstairs and fetched a broom, a dustpan and a soft brush.
“We’ll have to do this carefully,” he said. “It’d be terrible if we threw it away with the sand.”
“We could sieve it,” suggested Patrick.
“That’s a good idea! In the garden.”
They carried the sand out in a cardboard box and Omri borrowed his father’s large garden sieve. Omri held it and Patrick spooned in the sand and earth with a trowel. Several small treasures came to light, including a ten pence piece. But no key.
Omri was in despair. He and Patrick sat down on the lawn under a tree and he took the two little men out of his pocket.
“Where woman?” Little Bull asked instantly.
“Never mind the wimmin, whur’s the vittles?” asked the every-hungry Boone grumpily.
Omri and Patrick fed them some more Toffo, and, with a deep sense of misery, Omri produced the plastic Indian woman from his pocket. Little Bull stopped chewing chocolate crumbs the moment he saw her and gazed in rapture. It was obvious he was half in love with her already. He reached out a hand and tenderly touched her plastic hair.
“Make real! Now!” he breathed.
“I can’t,” said Omri.
“Why can’t?” asked Little Bull sharply.
“The magic’s gone.”
Now Boone stopped eating too, and he and Little Bull exchanged a frightened look.
“Ya mean – ya cain’t send us back?” asked Boone in an awe-stricken whisper. “Never? We got to live in a giants’ world for ever?”
It was clear that Little Bull had been explaining matters.
“Don’t you like being with us?” asked Patrick.
“Wal… Ah wouldn’t want to hurt yer feelin’s none,” said Boone. “But jest think how you’d feel if Ah wuz as big to you as you are to me!”
“Little Bull?” asked Omri.
Little Bull dragged his eyes away from the plastic figure and fixed them – like little bright crumbs of black glass – on Omri.
“Omri good,” he pronounced at last. “But Little Bull Indian brave – Indian Chief. How be brave, how be chief with no other Indians?”
Omri opened his mouth. If he had not lost the key, he might have rashly offered to bring to life an entire tribe of Indians, simply to keep Little Bull contented. Through his mind flashed the knowledge of what this meant. It wasn’t the fun, the novelty, the magic that mattered any more. What mattered was that Little Bull should be happy. For that, he would take on almost anything.
They all sat quietly on the lawn. There seemed nothing more to say.
A movement near the back of the house caught Omri’s eye. It was his mother, coming out to hang up some wet clothes. He thought she moved as if she were tired and fed up. She stood for a moment on the back balcony, looking at the sky. Then she sighed and began pegging the clothes to the line.
On impulse Omri got up and went over to her.
“You – you haven’t found anything of mine, have you?” he asked.
“No – I don’t think so. What have you lost?”
But Omri was too ashamed to admit he’d lost the key she’d told him to be so careful of. “Oh, nothing much,” he said.
He went back to Patrick, who was showing the men an ant. Boone was trying to pat its head like a dog, but it wasn’t very responsive.
“Well,” Omri said, “we might as well make the best of things. Why not bring the horses out and give the fellows a ride?”
This cheered everyone up and Omri ran up and brought the two ponies down carefully in an empty box. Next Patrick stamped a small patch of the lawn hard to give the horses a really good gallop. Quite a large black beetle alighted on the flattened part, and Little Bull shot it dead with an arrow. This cheered him up a bit more (though not much). While the ponies grazed the fresh grass, he kept giving great love-sick sighs and Omri knew he was thinking of the woman.
“Maybe you’d rather not stay the night now,” Omri said to Patrick.
“I want to,” said Patrick. “If you don’t mind.”
Omri felt too upset to care one way or the other. When they were called in to supper he noticed that Adiel was trying to be friendly, but he wouldn’t speak to him. Afterwards Adiel took him aside.
“What’s up with you now? I’m trying to be nice. You got your silly old cupboard back.”
“It’s no good without the key.”
“Well, I’m sorry! It must have dropped out on the way up to the attic.”
On the way up to the attic! Omri hadn’t thought of that. “Will you help me find it?” he asked eagerly. “Please! It’s terribly important!”
“Oh… all right then.”
The four of them hunted for half an hour. They didn’t find it.
After that, Gillon and Adiel had to go out to some function at school, so Patrick and Omri had the television to themselves. They took out the two men and explained this new magic, and then they all watched together. First came a film about animals,
