Return of the Indian

How clearly it all came back. The cupboard. The strange little key which had been his great-grandmother’s, and which had mysteriously fitted the commonplace lock and turned this ordinary little metal box into a time-machine with a difference. Put any plastic object – an axe, an Indian tepee, a quiver of arrows – into it, close the door, turn the key – and those things became real. Miniature, but real. Real leather, real cloth, real steel. Put the plastic figure of a human being or an animal inside, and, in the time it took to lock them in, they, too, became real. Real and alive. And not just ‘living toys’, but people from another time, with their own lives, their own personalities, needs and demands…

Oh, it hadn’t been all fun and games, as Omri had naively expected at first. Little Bull was no toy, to submit tamely to being played with. He was, for all his tiny stature, a ferocious savage, war-like and domineering.

Omri had soon realized that if any grown-ups found out about the cupboard’s magic properties they would take it, and the Indian, and everything else, away. So Omri had had to keep it secret, and look after, feed and protect his Indian as best he could. And when Patrick had found out the secret, and sneaked a Texas cowboy into the cupboard so that he, too, could have a ‘little person’, the trouble really started.

Little Bull and Boone were natural enemies. They came close to killing each other several times. Even their respective ponies had caused endless difficulties. And then Adiel had taken the cupboard one day, the key had fallen out of the lock and been lost, and Omri, Patrick and the two little men had been faced with the dire possibility that the magic was dead, that these minute and helpless people would have to remain in Omri’s time, his ‘giant’ world, and in his care, for ever…

It was this, the terrible fright they had all had from this notion, that had finally proved to Omri that he would have to give up his Indian friend (for friends they were by then, of a sort), and send the little people ‘back’ – back to their own time, through the magic of the cupboard. When the key was found, that’s what they all agreed on. But it was so hard to part, that Boone (who was shamefully soft-hearted for a cowboy) had cried openly, and even the boys’ eyes were wet… Omri seldom let himself think of those last moments, they upset him so much.

When they’d reopened the cupboard door, there were the two groups: Little Bull and the wife Omri had found him, Twin Stars, sitting on Little Bull’s pony, and ‘Boo-Hoo’ Boone on his white horse – only now they were plastic again. Patrick had taken Boone and put him in his pocket. And Omri had kept the Indians. He had them still. He had packed them in a little wooden box which he kept safely at the very bottom of the chest. Actually it was a box-within-a-box-within-a-box. Each was tied tightly with string. There was a reason for all this. Omri had wanted to make them difficult to get at.

He had always known that he would be tempted to put Little Bull and Twin Stars in the cupboard again and bring them back to life. He was curious about how they were getting on – that alone tormented him every day. They had lived in dangerous times, times of war between tribes, wars aided and encouraged by Frenchmen and Englishmen who were fighting on American soil in those far-off days. Boone’s time, the time of the pioneering of Texas, a hundred years after Little Bull’s era, was dangerous, too.

And there’d been another little man, Tommy, the medical orderly, from the trenches of France in the First World War. They’d magicked him to life to help when Little Bull was kicked by his horse, when Boone was apparently dying of an arrow-wound… Tommy might, just might still be alive in Omri’s world, but he would be terribly old, about ninety by now.

By putting their plastic figures into the magic cupboard, by turning the magic key, Omri had the power to recall them to life – to youth. He could snatch them from the past. The whole business nearly blew Omri’s mind every time he thought at all deeply about it. So he tried not to think about it too much. And to prevent his yielding to temptation, he had given his mother the key. She wore it round her neck on a chain (it was quite decorative). People often asked her about it, and she would say, “It’s Omri’s really, but he lends it to me.”

That wasn’t the whole truth. Omri had pressed it on her and begged her to keep it safe for him. Safe… not just from getting lost again, but safe from him, from his longing to use it again, to reactivate the magic, to bring back his friends. To bring back the time when he had been – not happiest, but most intensely, dangerously alive himself.

4 The Sweet Taste of Triumph (#ulink_5ac9bc86-c103-5bbc-bc22-ceeeba2c92cc)

When Omri came downstairs again with the copy of his story, his brothers were both back from school.

Noticing that their parents were fairly gibbering with excitement, they were both pestering loudly to be told what had happened, but, being decent, Omri’s mother and father were refusing to spoil his surprise. However, the moment he entered the room his father turned and pointed to him.

“It’s Omri’s news,” he said. “Ask him to tell you.”

“Well?” asked Gillon.

“Go on,” said Adiel. “Don’t drive us mad.”

“It’s just that I’ve won a prize,” said Omri with the utmost carelessness. “Here, Mum.” He handed her the folder, and she rushed out of the room with it clutched to her bosom, saying that she couldn’t wait another minute to read it.

“Prize for what?” asked Adiel cynically.

“For winning a donkey-race?” inquired Gillon.

“Nothing much, it was only a story,” said Omri. It was such a long time since he had felt this good, he needed to spin it out.

“What story?” asked Adiel.

“What’s the prize?” asked Gillon at the same time.

“You know, that Telecom competition. There was an ad on TV. You had to write in for a leaflet.”

“Oh, that,” said Adiel, and went into the kitchen to get himself something to eat.

But Gillon was gazing at him. He paid more attention to ads, and he had remembered a detail that Adiel had forgotten.

“The prizes were money,” he said slowly. “Big money.”

Omri grunted non-committally, sat down at the table and shifted Kitsa, who was still there, on to his lap.

“How much?” pressed Gillon.

“Hm?”

“How much did you win? You didn’t get first prize!”

“Yeah.”

Gillon got up.

“Not… you haven’t won three hundred quid?”

Adiel’s face appeared round the kitchen door, wearing a look of comical amazement.

“WHAT! What did you say?”

“That was the first prize in each category. I thought about entering myself.” Excitement and envy were in Gillon’s voice now, making it wobble up and down in register. He turned back to Omri. “Come on! Tell us.”

“Yeah,” said Omri again.

He felt their eyes on him and a great gleeful laugh rising in him, like the time Boone had done a tiny, brilliant drawing during Omri’s art lesson and the teacher had seen it and couldn’t believe her eyes. She’d thought Omri had done it somehow. This time was even more fun, though, because this time he had.

He was sitting watching television some time later, when Adiel came in quietly and sat down beside him.

“I’ve read it,” he said after a while. His tone had changed completely.

“What? Oh, my Indian story.”

“Yes. Your Indian story.” There was a pause, and then Adiel – his ten-O-level brother – said very sincerely, almost humbly, “It’s one of the best stories I’ve ever read.”

Omri turned to look at him.

“Do you really like it?” he asked eagerly. Whatever rows he might have with his brothers, and he had them daily, their good opinion mattered. 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.