The Indian in the Cupboard Trilogy

“All right. But first I have to give this stuff to my dad.”

There was a further delay when his father at first insisted on Omri filling the seed-tray with compost and planting the seeds in it then and there. But when Omri gave him the corn seed as a present he said, “Well! Thanks. Oh, all right, I can see you’re bursting to get away. You can do the planting tomorrow before school.”

Omri and Patrick rushed upstairs. At the top Omri stopped, cold. His bedroom door, which he always shut automatically, was wide open. And just inside, crouching side by side with their backs to him, were his brothers.

They were so absolutely still that Omri knew they were watching something. He couldn’t bear it. They had come into his room without his permission, and they had seen his Indian. Now they would tell everybody! His secret, his precious secret, his alone to keep or share, was a secret no more. Something broke inside him and he heard himself scream: “Get out of my room! Get out of my room!”

Both boys spun round.

“Shut up, you’ll frighten him,” said Adiel at once. “Gillon came in to look for his rat and he found it, and then he saw this absolutely fabulous little house you’ve made and he called me in to look at it.”

Omri looked at the floor. The seed-tray, with the longhouse now nearly finished, had been moved into the centre of the room. It was that they had been looking at. A quick glance all round showed no sign of Indian or pony, but Gillon’s tame white rat was on his shoulder.

“I can’t get over it,” Adiel went on. “How on earth did you do it, without using any Airfix glue or anything? It’s all done with tiny little threads, and pegs, and – look, Gillon! It’s all made of real twigs and bark. It’s absolutely terrific,” he said with such awe-struck admiration in his voice that Omri felt ashamed.

“I didn’t—” he began. But Patrick, who had been gaping at the longhouse in amazement, gave him a heavy nudge which nearly knocked him over.

“Yes,” said Omri. “Well. Would you mind pushing off now? And take the rat. You’re not to let him in here! This is my room, you know.”

“And this is my magnifying glass, you know,” echoed Gillon, but he was obviously too overcome with admiration to be angry with Omri for pinching it. He was using it now to examine the fine details of the building. “I knew you were good at making things,” he said. “But this is amazing. You must have fingers like a fairy to tie those witchy little knots. What’s that?” he asked suddenly.

They’d all heard it – a high, faint whinny coming from under the bed.

Omri was galvanized into action. At all costs he must prevent their finding out now! He flung himself on his knees and pretended to grope under the bed. “It’s nothing, only that little clockwork dolphin I got in my Christmas stocking,” he burbled. “I must have wound it up and it suddenly started clicking, you know how they do, it’s quite creepy sometimes when they suddenly start – clicking—”

By this time he’d leapt up again and was almost pushing the two older boys out of the room.

“Why are you in such a hurry to get rid of us?” asked Gillon suspiciously.

“Just go, you know you have to get out of my room when I ask you—” He could hear the pony whinnying again and it didn’t sound a bit like a dolphin.

“That sounds just like a pony,” said Adiel.

“Oh, beard it’s a pony, a tiny witchy pony under my bed!” said Omri mockingly.

At last they went, not without glancing back suspiciously several times, and Omri slammed the door, bolted it, and leant against it with closed eyes.

“Is it a pony?” whispered Patrick, agog.

Omri nodded. Then he opened his eyes, lay down again, and peered under the bed.

“Give me that torch from the chest-of-drawers.”

Patrick gave it to him and lay beside him. They peered together as the torch-beam probed the darkness.

“Crumbs!” breathed Patrick reverently. “It’s true!”

The pony was standing, seemingly 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. Then he went to the kitchen. His mother was standing at the sink peeling apples.

Omri hesitated, then went to the fridge.

“Don’t eat now, Omri, it’s nearly suppertime.”

“Just a tiny bit,” he said.

There was a lovely chunk of raw meat on a plate. Omri sniffed his fingers, wiped them hard on his sweater to get the stink of the firelighter off them, then took a big carving-knife from the drawer and, with an anxious glance at his mother’s back, began sawing a corner off the meat.

Luckily it was steak and cut easily. Even so he nearly had the whole plate off the fridge shelf and onto the floor before he’d cut his corner off.

His mother swung round just as he closed the fridge door.

“A tiny bit of what?” she asked. She often reacted late to things he said.

“Nothing,” he said, hiding the raw bit of meat in his hand. “Mum, could I borrow a tin plate?”

“I haven’t got such a thing.”

“Yes you have, the one you bought Adiel to go camping.”

“That’s in Adiel’s room somewhere, I haven’t got it. A tiny bit of what?”

But Omri was already on his way upstairs. Adiel was in his room (he would be) doing his homework.

“What do you want?” he asked the second Omri crept in.

“That plate – you know – your camping one.”

“Oh, that!” said Adiel, going back to his French.

“Well, can I have it?”

“Yeah, I suppose so. It’s over there somewhere.”

Omri found it eventually in an old knapsack, covered with disgusting bits of baked beans, dry and hard as cement. He hurried across to his own room. Whenever he’d been away from it for even a few minutes, he felt his heart beating in panic as he opened the door for fear of what he might find (or not find). The burden of constant worry was beginning to wear him out.

But all was as he had left it this time. Patrick was crouching near the seed-tray Little Bull was directing him to take the tops off several of the jars of poster paint while he himself fashioned something almost too small to see.

“It’s a paintbrush,” whispered Patrick. “He cut a bit of his own hair and he’s tying it to a scrap of wood he found about the size of a big splinter.”

“Pour a bit of paint into the lids so he can reach to dip,” said Omri.

Meanwhile he was scraping the dry beans off the plate with his nails. He took the fragment of firelighter and the privet-twigs out of his pocket and arranged them in the centre of the plate. He washed the bit of meat in his bedside water glass. He’d had a wonderful idea for a spit to cook it on. From a flat box in which his first Meccano set had once been neatly laid out, but which was not in chaos, he took a rod, ready bent into a handle shape, and pushed this through the meat. Then, from small bits of Meccano, he quickly made a sort of stand for it to rest on, with legs each side of the fire so that the meat hung over the middle of it.

“Let’s light it now!” said Patrick, who was getting very excited again.

“Little Bull – come and see your fire,” said Omri.

Little Bull looked up from his paints and then ran down the ramp, across the carpet and vaulted onto the edge of the plate. Omri struck a match and lit the firelighter, which flared up at once with a bluish flame, engulfing the twigs and the meat at once. The twigs gave off a gratifying crackle while they lasted, but the firelighter gave off a very ungratifying stench which made Little Bull wrinkle up his nose.

“Stink!” he cried. “Spoil meat!”

“No it won’t!” Omri said. “Turn the handle of the spit, Little Bull.”

Evidently he wasn’t much used to spits, but he soon got the hang of it. The chunk of steak turned and turned in the flame, and soon lost its raw red look and began to go grey and then brown. The good juicy smell of roasting beef began to compete with the reek of the firelighter.

“Mmm!” said Little Bull appreciatively, turning the handle till the sweat ran off his face. “Meat!” He had thrown off his Chief’s cloak and his chest shone red. Patrick couldn’t take his eyes off him.

“Please Omri,” he whispered, “couldn’t I have one? Couldn’t I choose just one – a soldier, or anything I liked – and make him come to life in your cupboard?”

8

Cowboy!

Omri gaped at him. He hadn’t thought of this, but of course now that he did it was obvious – no boy who knew the secret could possibly rest until he had a little live person of his own.

“Patrick – it’s not like you think – just something to play with—”

“Of course not, you’ve explained all about it, now just let me put—”

“But you have to think about it first. No, no, stop, you can’t yet! And anyway I don’t agree to you using one of mine!” Omri didn’t know why he was so reluctant. It wasn’t that he was mean. He just knew, somehow, that something awful would happen if he let Patrick have his own way. But it wasn’t easy to stop him. Omri had grabbed him, but he wrenched free.

“I’ve got to—” he panted. “I’ve got to—”

He stretched out his hand towards the pile of soldiers again. They struggled. Patrick seemed to have gone a bit crazy. Suddenly Omri felt the rim of the tin plate under his shifting feet.

He shoved Patrick out of the way and they both stared downward. The plate had tipped, the fire slipped on to the carpet. Little Bull, with a yell, had leapt clear, and was now waving his arms and shouting horrible things at them. His roast meat had disappeared under Omri’s foot, which instinctively stamped down on the fire to put it out. Omri felt the Meccano crunching under his school shoe, and a squishy feeling …

“Now look! We’ve spoilt the meat!” he shouted at Patrick. “If all you can do is fight, I wish I’d never brought you!”

Patrick looked mulish. “It was your fault. You should have let me put something in the cupboard.”

Omri lifted his shoe. Underneath was a nasty mess of burnt stuff, squashed meat and bent Meccano. Little Bull let out a wail.

“You no great spirit! Only stupid boy! Fight, spoil good meal! You feel shame!”

“Maybe we can rescue it—”

He crouched down and disentangled the meat from the mess, burning his fingers. He tried to brush it clean but it was no use – it was all mixed up with the smelly stuff of the firelighter, and stuck with bits of carpet hairs.

“I’m terribly sorry, Little Bull,” he mumbled.

“No good sorry! Little Bull hungry, work all day, cook meat – now what eat? I chop you down like tree!” And to Omri’s horror he saw Little Bull run to where the battleaxe was lying, pick it up and advance towards his leg, swinging it in great circles as he came.

Patrick fairly danced with excitement. “Isn’t he fantastically brave, though! Much more than David with Goliath!”

Omri felt the whole thing was going too far. He removed his leg from harm’s way. “Little Bull! Calm down,” he said. “I’ve said I’m sorry.”

Little Bull looked at him, blazing-eyed. Then he rushed over to the chair Omri used at his table and began chopping wedges out of the leg of it.

“Stop! Stop! Or I’ll put you back in the cupboard!”

Little Bull stopped abruptly and dropped the axe. He stood with his back to them, his shoulders heaving.

“I’ll get you something to eat – right now – something delicious. Go and paint. It’ll make you feel better. I won’t be long.” To Patrick he said, “Hang on. I can smell supper cooking, I’ll go and get a bit of whatever we’re having,” and he rushed downstairs without stopping to think.

His mother was dishing up a nice hot stew.

“Can I have a tiny bit of that, Mum? Just a little bit, in a spoon. It’s for a game we’re playing.”

His mother obligingly gave him a big spoonful. “Don’t let it drip,” she said. “Does Patrick want to stay for supper?”

“I don’t know – I’ll ask,” said Omri.

“Were you two fighting up there? I heard thumps.”

“No-o – not really. It was just that he wanted to do something that I—”

Omri stopped dead, as if frozen to the ground. He might have been frozen, his face went so cold. Patrick was up there – with the cupboard – and two biscuit-tinsful of little plastic figures – alone!

He ran. He usually won the egg-and-spoon race at the school sports, which was just as well – it’s hard enough to carry an egg in a spoon running along a flat field; it’s a great deal harder to carry a tablespoonful of boiling hot stew steady while you rush up a flight of stairs. If most of it was still there when he got to the top it was more by good luck than skill because he was hardly noticing the spoon at all – all he could think of was what might be – no, must be happening in his room, and how much more of it would happen if he didn’t hurry.

He burst in through the door and saw exactly what he’d dreaded – Patrick, bent over the cupboard, just turning the key to open it.

“What—” Omri gasped out between panting breaths, but he had no need to go on. Patrick, without turning round, opened the cupboard and reached in. Then he did turn. He was gazing into his cupped hands with eyes like huge marbles. He slowly extended his hands towards Omri, and whispered, “Look!”

Omri, stepping forward, had just time to feel intensely glad that at least Patrick had not put a whole handful of figures in but had only changed one. But which? He leant over, then drew back with a gasp.

It was the cowboy. And his horse.

The horse was in an absolute panic. It was scrambling about wildly in the cup of Patrick’s hand, snorting and pawing, up one minute and down on its side the next, stirrups and reins flying. It was a beautiful horse, snow-white with a long mane and tail, and the sight of it acting so frightened gave Omri heart-pains.

As for the cowboy, he was too busy dodging the horse’s flying feet and jumping out of the way when he fell to notice much about his surroundings. He probably thought he was caught in an earthquake. Omri and Patrick watched, spellbound, as the little man in his plaid shirt, buckskin trousers, high-heeled leather boots and big hat, scrambled frantically up the side of Patrick’s right hand and, dodging through the space between his index finger and thumb, swung himself clear of the horse – only to look down and find he was dangling over empty space.

His hat came off and fell, slowly like a leaf, down, down, down to the floor so infinitely far below. The cowboy gave a yell, and scrabbled with his feet against the back of Patrick’s hand, hanging on for dear fife to the ridge beside his thumbnail.

“Hold your hands still!” Omri commanded Patrick, who in his excitement was jerking them nervously about. There was a moment of stillness. The horse stood up, trembling all over, prancing about with terror. Beside his hooves was some tiny black thing. Omri peered closer. It was the pistol.

The cowboy had now recovered a little. He scrambled back through the finger-gap and said something to the horse which sounded like “Whoaback, steady, fella.” Then he slid down and grabbed the reins, holding them just below the horse’s nose. He patted its face. That seemed to calm it. Then, looking round swiftly but not apparently noticing the enormous faces hanging over him, he reached cautiously down and picked the pistol up from between the horse’s hooves.

“Whoa there! Stand—”

Omri watched like a person hypnotized. He wanted to cry out to Patrick that it was a real gun, but somehow he couldn’t. He could only think that the sound of his voice would throw the horse once more into a panic and the horse or man would get hurt. Instead he watched while the cowboy pointed the gun in various directions warily. Then he lowered it.

Still holding the reins he moved until he could press his hand against Patrick’s skin. Then he let his eyes move upward towards the curved fingers just level with the top of his head.

“What the dawggone heck—” he said. “It sure looks like a great big – Aw, what’m Ah talkin’ about? It cain’t be. Hell, it just ain’t possible!” But the more he looked, the more certain he must have become that he was, indeed, in a pair of cupped hands. And finally, after scratching his gingery head for a moment, he ventured to look right up past the fingers, and then of course he saw Patrick’s face looking at him.

There was a petrified moment when he couldn’t move. Then he raised his pistol in a flash.

“Patrick! Shut your eyes!”

Bang!

It was only a little bang, but it was a real bang, and a puff of real, gun-smelling smoke appeared. Patrick shouted with pain and surprise and would have dropped the pair if Omri hadn’t thrust his hand underneath to catch them. Patrick’s own hand had clapped itself to his cheek.

“Ow! Ow! He’s shot me!” Patrick screamed.

Omri was not much bothered about Patrick at that moment. He was furious with him, and very anxious about the little man and his horse. Quickly he put them down on the bed, saying, like the cowboy himself, “Steady! Whoa! I won’t hurt you! It’s okay!”

“Ow!” Patrick kept yelling. “It hurts! Ow!”

“Serve you right, I warned you,” said Omri. Then he felt sorry and said, “Let’s have a look.”

Gingerly Patrick took his hand down. A drop of blood had been smeared on his cheek, and by peering very close Omri could see something very like a bee’s sting embedded in his skin.

“Hang on! I see it – I’ll squeeze it out—”

“OW!”

A quick squeeze between his thumbnails and the almost invisible speck of black metal, which had only just penetrated the skin, popped out.