The Secret Country Read Free Page B

into the tall grass on the other side, and stared at her knee. It was covered with blood. She was too impressed to shriek again.
    “Watch out,” she said to the cracking and rustling that was Ted trying to get through the hedge. “I fell on something sharp.”
    Ted wormed his way through. “Are you all right?”
    “It’s awfully bloody,” said Laura.
    “If I tie my handkerchief around it it’ll stick,” said Ted, with the certainty of experience.
    “Give it to me,” said Laura. She wiped the blood off. “Ech!” she said. “That’s a cut! Look at that!”
    “What did you fall on?”
    “It was in the hedge,” said Laura, busy with the handkerchief.
    Ted ducked back into the hedge. “I can see something shiny in here,” he said. “At least you won’t get tetanus.” He rustled about in the dead maple leaves. The cardinal sang suddenly overhead.
    “What is it, a broken bottle?” asked Laura, obliterating the last clean spot on Ted’s handkerchief.
    Ted did not answer her.
    “Hey,” said Laura.
    Ted backed out of the hedge, holding a small sword. There was no dirt on it. The hilt was black and set with blue stones. Neither Ted nor Laura knew anything about jewels, but they both agreed that the stones did not look like sapphires. Lines they could not quite make out ran down the blade. It caught a stray sunbeam and dazzled their eyes.
    “It doesn’t have any blood on it,” said Laura.
    “It’s the only thing under there.”
    “It’s so little,” said Laura. “Secret size, for a sword.”
    “Maybe it belongs to the people who live here. We should ask.”
    “Nobody lives here,” said Laura, who was afraid of strangers and wanted the sword. She put her hand out for it.
    “They could,” said Ted, pulling it out of her reach and standing up. He started for the door, which opened. A tall woman with a broom came out onto the path.
    “How came you here?” she demanded, and her voice made the fine hairs stand up on the backs of their necks. Ted dropped the sword and hauled his sister to her feet, trying to push her through the hedge. Laura, surprising herself, shoved him, and he fell through it himself.
    Laura grabbed the sword and scrambled through after him. Instead of ending up on the sidewalk, she fell into cold water, sword and all.

CHAPTER 2
    LAURA stood up in the stream. Its gravelly bottom had taken some skin off an elbow, but at least she had not fallen on the sword. She wiped her wet hair out of her face and shook water from the sword. The sun struck the swinging blade, making a flash that brought tears to her eyes.
    She put the sword behind her and looked at where she was. The house was still there, but there was no woman at the door. There were no Ted, no street, and no other houses. The stream went down a hill and vanished into a forest, and everywhere else were green fields. It was very hot and bright, but not stuffy. Laura looked at the pattern the oak and maple leaves made against the sharp sky, and felt something poke at the back of her mind—nothing so clear as an apprehension nor so definite as a memory, but something. The leaves looked right. So, in this desolate setting, did the house. She frowned at the house. She felt, somehow, that she ought to be afraid of it.
    Laura floundered to the sandy edge of the stream and climbed up onto the grass below the hedge, dripping.
    “Ted!” she yelled through the hedge.
    No one answered.
    Laura screamed at the top of her lungs. “Ted!”
    No one answered. Laura drew in her breath to call again, and changed her mind. The hot still air made her feel as if she were shouting into a pillow. If Ted was not in the yard, he was probably not where he could hear her, and who knew what was where it could hear her?
    Thinking about that made her remember the sword. She did not think being wet could be good for it. She lifted it out of the stream, holding it at arm’s length, and stared up at the house. There were lace curtains at the windows, and