“And then I met Josephine, and I ate oatmeal with sugar, and she let me sleep in her squashy bed.” Josephine couldn’t help smiling. It was so good to hear his voice, and it wasn’t timid or afraid. It was the voice of a healthy boy.
“But then I missed my friend Ida and I wanted her to see Josephine, so I left.”
“Incredible!” the Master said. “So you transported yourself through—”
Just then there was a knock on the door and one of the servants entered.
“I told you not to disturb me!” the Master yelled.
“Yes, sir,” the poor man said with down-turned eyes. “It’s just that . . . there is an intruder in the house, sir, and he has just breached the western hall.”
The Master nodded at him and then gave Josephine a knowing wink. “Your friend the sweeper’s son, I suppose?”
Josephine felt as if she had been knocked down a flight of stairs. He knew about Ned! This whole thing had been nothing but a trap.
FORTY-FOUR
Ned stood facing an enormous silver door with no doorknob. Two more just like it were to his left and to his right. As a matter of fact, the entire house seemed to be made up of nothing but silver doors. He wasn’t being as quiet as he wanted. He was soaking wet and his shoes squeaked with every step he took. He had been so afraid of nasty creatures in the moat, but it seemed the only real danger after all was the stink. Ned positively reeked. If his noise didn’t set off any alarms, then certainly his odor would.
He had never seen a building like this one. Every hallway seemed to turn back on itself and lead him back to where he started. The walls and ceilings were opalescent, and despite no obvious light source, the space was almost blindingly bright.
No one door looked more safe or dangerous than the next, so finally he just picked one at random, leaned against it, knocked, and said, “Hello?” After a few moments, a voice came back from the other side.
“Who’s there?” It sounded like a young girl.
“I’m Ned, and I’m looking for some children.”
“We’re children.”
“Oh, great!” He couldn’t believe his luck. “Do you know how to open this door?”
“Yes. There is a switch on the opposite wall.”
Ned saw nothing on the opposite wall but a smooth surface. But as he looked harder, he could see that there was a patch of the wall that seemed less smooth. He touched it, and the door opened behind him. He turned to find a girl with bug eyes and dirty hair standing before him, surprised.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Ned and I have no time to explain. If you want to get out of here and get back to your families, then you have to leave with me right now.”
“You smell.”
“I know. But I’m still a good person. We have to hurry.” Behind the girl, he saw ten other children looking at him excitedly. “Let’s go,” he told them. “We have to get everybody else.” The children ran out of the room and joined him in the hallway.
“Open all of these doors and make sure you get everyone out. You go left and I’ll go right. Meet back here in five minutes.”
The children did as they were told as Ned continued to open the silver doors. He found small groups of drained, bored children behind each one. Each child looked as though he or she had been stuck in a suffocating classroom and forced to take an excruciating and interminable math exam.
As he cleared the last room, some of the children refused to leave. He marched inside. “What’s the problem?” he demanded.
“We don’t want to leave our friend.”
Ned looked down and saw a girl sitting with her knees hugged to her chest. She was rocking slightly and muttering her ABCs. And although she was pale and thin, Ned recognized her immediately as his aunt, Lucy.
“Lucy?” He knelt down. “Lucy . . . you’re alive!”
But she did not respond. She kept muttering letters to herself. “M . . . N . . . O . . . P . . .”
“My name is Ned and I’m your brother’s son. I’ve come to help you!” He looked up at the other children helplessly. “What’s wrong with her?”
A boy replied, “She went into the holes again last week, and when she came back, she was like this. Sometimes that happens if you don’t eat enough the night before.”
Ned wanted to cry. Last week! She had been okay until last week. He looked back down at his vacant aunt. “Come on, Lucy. We have to get you out of this place.” He bent down and picked her up. She weighed less than air. She didn’t protest but continued to stare off into nothingness. He ran out of the room holding her, the other children following behind. He headed for the first door, where the others were waiting. By the time he arrived, he saw before him a group of nearly seventy children.
“Okay, listen, everyone. There are a lot of us. I have to lower you out the window one at a time, and then you have to climb down the wall and swim across the moat. Can everyone here do that?”
The children nodded, feeling that they could fly if Ned needed them to.
“Oh,” he added, “be sure to hold your noses.”
FORTY-FIVE
The Brothers had almost dug to the bottom of the hole. They could smell the three humans, and they grunted and snorted as they clawed at roots and mud.
Down below, Mary, Clarence, and Ida clung to one another as the hole began to crumble around them. Ida coughed as the dirt and dust filled her lungs, and she told Mary to keep her head down. Ida had been in bad situations before, but nothing like this. She could hear the watery snorting of the Brothers and could smell their acrid bodies. She had no ideas, no plan for an escape. They were trapped, and that was it.
She was so frustrated and exhausted and sick of being in a dark hole that she suddenly started screaming a litany of insults at the Brothers.
“Leave us alone, you disgusting, mouthless, snotnosed, bum-faced freaks! You smell like a pig’s backside!”
