Lavender-Green Magic (26 page)

The covers were thin pieces of wood, but the spine was leather. The volume was fastened securely shut with a metal clasp such as Holly had never seen on a book before, quite unlike the strap and lock which her diary had. She pulled at
the metal very gingerly, not even sure that the hasp was not locked in some way. However, at her touch the metal pieces slid easily apart.

Holly, that mingled tingle of excitement and fear growing all the stronger in her, lifted the cover. The pages did not feel like paper, either. They were thicker than any paper she had ever seen and a deep yellow.

Inside was writing, not printing—writing she could not read! As she turned the pages, she found drawings, too, in the form of stars and odd-shaped crosses. The old writing went around them as if explaining. But Holly could not make out a single word she knew. Her disappointment was deep. She flicked over the next page with a growing impatience. It was loose and slipped from the book onto the bed. Then she saw the sheet had not been a page at all, but a separate paper, very brown, which had been folded and tucked in tightly there.

A little bit of the edge flaked off as she tried to pick it up, and she was afraid of tearing it to bits before she could even see what it was. Then she had an idea. Her new photograph album had clear sheets between which one could set pictures—she might put this whole page in there, but she would have to be very careful.

“What's that?” Judy leaned over to look at the find.

“Don't touch it!” ordered Holly. “It's so old, it's coming apart. I'm going to try this.” She put down the unreadable book and found the photograph album, opening it to an unused page. “If I can get it unfolded,” she explained, “without it tearing all up, we can put it in here.”

“I'll hold the book for you!” Judy offered.

Holly had never worked with such care. This was how Grandma probably had to do it when she mended the broken china. Luckily most of what flaked off was just around the edge, and she was able to get the sheet spread out without losing much. There was a drawing on it, too, but she did not stop to examine it closely. Instead she worked as fast as she could to get it under the plastic covering in the album.

When that was done at last, she held it closer to the lamp. This was a drawing of the maze! Done in far more detail than the embroidery on the pillow. In the center of rings of paths was a small garden, just like the one which had been in front of Tamar's house. But there was no house. And around the outer walls of the maze were lines of flower beds. Some were very strange-looking, for the flowers had been planted to form square knots or other geometric shapes.

There was a lot of lettering. Perhaps, Holly guessed, the names of the flowers and shrubs which were supposed to be planted in each bed. However, at the bottom were much larger words, ones she could read: “Ye Garden as be made for Dimsdale, in ye year 1683, by Master Herbert Truelow.”

A picture of the garden, the Dimsdale garden which Tamar's father had made! Holly ran her finger over the plastic sheet protecting the very old drawing. “Judy, I'm going to copy this, for my project report. But this ought to be in the museum where everyone can see it. I'll bet there isn't another garden like this, with a maze and all, in the whole state of Massachusetts—maybe not even in the whole country! I wonder how much of it we can still see?”

“There's the maze, if we could get in.” Judy bumped heads with Holly, she was so eager to get closer to look at the page. “Grandpa, Grandma, they might know—”

Carefully Holly loosened the plastic page from the album. And, when they heard Grandma's dinner bell, she carried it with her downstairs. She was already thinking about what she would say when they asked her where she found it. To tell about Tamar's book—no, she could not do that. But she could say, and it would be true, that she found it folded in the pages of an old book. Grandma knew she had been going through the books on Grandma's library shelves, and some were very old.

“Shouldn't think you young'uns 'd want much to eat tonight,” Grandpa said when he had finished saying grace, “seein' as how you had all those party fixin's.”

“An' eat all of 'em did,” Grandma announced. “Not only ourn but all the rest. Seems like young'uns get empty clean down to their toe-tips.

“I was right proud of you,” she continued. “Miss Sarah an' Mrs. Beach, an' Mrs. Hawkins, they all came up to me to say as how them costumes of yours were awfully good. Mrs. Dale, she wants the pattern for the cat one, Judy. Says as how they're fixin' to give a play at Christmas time with Puss-in-Boots, an' she never did see such a lifelike-lookin' cat as you turned out to be. Yes, the party was grand, all of it.”

But to Holly the party was already far in the past. It was the present, and the plan she was working on, which were of the first importance. She waited for Grandpa to finish his soup and start in on his brown bread and jelly. Then she
could wait no longer. “Grandpa, does any of the old garden here still show? I know the maze is there all grown up and tight, but the rest of it?”

He took what seemed to Holly an extra long moment to answer. “Well now, it's hard to tell. There's some old lilacs, like trees now. But they weren't planted that long ago. Oaks maybe—I jus' dunno.”

Holly felt a swift disappointment. If
none
of the old garden was there, then no one would be interested in keeping it. The maze—there was only the maze left!

“Grandpa, could you sort of tame the maze, find the old way in and out?” She held on to that last hope.

“The maze!” Grandma was staring at her.

But Grandpa looked interested. “Funny you say that right now, Holly. I was goin' 'round the edge o' that this afternoon. An' there was a dead bit which sorta hung out. I don't know why I gave it a tug, but I did. An' a whole big lot of it came loose, jus' like I pulled me out a cork. Inside there was a path, a paved path. It warn't near as growed together in there as we always thought, neither.”

“Miss Elvery,” cut in Grandma, “she said as how we should keep away from that.”

“Miss Elvery has been gone to her rest a good long time now, Mercy. Anyways—it always looked so dark an' dismal-like, I didn't have much use for it. But this evenin', well, it was different somehow. I got the feelin', with just a little prunin' an' the like, it could be opened up agin.”

Holly reached under the table edge for the sheet of plastic lying on her knees. “Grandpa, I found a kind of map—of
how the garden used to be. It was in an old book, all folded up, and just fell out. Look here!”

He took the page and held it closer to the lamp. “I do declare. Mercy, you remember that there book as you found for Miss Sarah, the big one from the Winslow place what they tore down to build the motel 'cross the river? That had all them queer oldish pictures 'bout gardens an' such. Well, this here might be right outta that.”

Grandma took the page in turn, rammed up her glasses high and hard on her nose. “It sure do look a little like 'em, Luther.”

“I'm going to copy it for my project,” Holly said. “But Grandpa, mazes—they aren't common in gardens, at least 'round here, are they?”

“Never did hear tell of one 'cept this.”

“Then it would be important to have one to show people,” Holly persisted. “People like the garden clubbers and the Scouts, and the people coming to the Sussex birthday celebration. It says on here that this was made in 1683. That's almost as old as the town, awfully old—”

Grandpa had stopped eating. He reached out and took the page back from Grandma, holding the sheet quite close to his nose as if to get a better look at every small detail.

“Th' town meetin' ”—it was Grandma who spoke first. “Luther, if the maze could be opened an', like Holly says, showed off right—”

Slowly Grandpa nodded. “It's a good thought, Mercy. Monday mornin' I gets me out there to see what good such thinkin' can do us.”

“You turn right to get to the center,” Judy said.

Holly was scared at her sister's thoughtlessness. Now they would ask how she could possibly know that. She thought the question was actually forming on Grandma's lips.

“You know how I know?” Judy continued, making, as far as Holly could see, bad matters much worse. “ 'Cause it's on the pillow—wait—”

She pushed free of the table, rushed for the stairs, disappearing above.

“Oh th' pillow, what does that young'un mean?” Grandpa asked. He looked to Holly for an answer and she could not find one. But Judy was coming back so fast, she almost tripped on the stairs. In one hand she held the pillow, which she gave to Grandma, who was the nearest, and with her finger she traced the lines of embroidery. “Look at the picture, then at this! See—they are the same. If you just keep turning right each time, you find the center!”

“I do believe she's right!” Grandma traced the way with her own finger, then got up to lean over Grandpa's shoulder to do the same on the plastic above the drawing. “An' mazes—they is uncommon, Luther. When Mrs. Holmes went with the garden clubbers from Boston on that there tour two springs ago, she told us all about one she saw in Virginia. They thought that was so important, people came from 'way off just to walk through it. They had to pay money to visit it an' the man who owned the place, he used the money to keep it in shape, hiring gardeners an' all. Luther, if there be anything th' Selectmen would relish, it would be a way of makin' money, 'specially durin' this
birthday week they is so set on havin'. Everybody in town is tryin' to think of ways to help out. Mr. Correy, he's goin' to open th' old blacksmithin' part of his shop an' have a blacksmith there to make things—an'—But you've heard 'em all a-talkin' 'bout this. Now you do some nosin' into the maze, an' if you think as how we can make somethin' unusual, we'll tell Mrs. Correy an' Mr. Bill. That'll give 'em some-thin' excitin' to say at the town meetin'! Luther, you take that there picture in to Miss Sarah on Monday. She'll be excited too. Me, I'm goin' to tell Mrs. Pigot an' Mrs. Holmes. She will be sure surprised what we got right here an' you don't got to go to Virginia to see, neither!”

Holly felt a shade of disappointment. After all, she had found the garden map, and no one seemed to remember that. Then she thought about the other parts of the plan. She would tell Mrs. Finch and Mrs. Dale. Crock, he could talk to the Scouts. They'd just have to organize, see that plenty of people would go to the town meeting—

She thought it would be hard to get to sleep that night, she had so many things to think about. But it was not. Instead she slipped right into a strange dream, one which she was able to remember in detail when she woke, as one seldom remembers a dream.

She had been in Tamar's house and it welcomed her; she felt as if she had come home to her own place. Tamar was there, sitting in the tall-backed chair at the table. She did not glance at Holly, or speak to her. Yet the girl was sure that Tamar did know she was there. But what she was doing was so important that she must not be disturbed.

Tamar's elbows rested on the table, her hands supporting her chin, as she gazed into a mirror which had been laid flat before her. Only, Tamar was not reflected in that mirror, nor was anything else about her. Instead the surface was covered with a silvery cloud which billowed and changed.

Holly felt the force of Tamar's will, for she was willing something to happen.

When Holly looked down onto the clouded mirror, it made her feel queer and dizzy, and she could not do it for long. But Tamar sat there so still, you hardly knew she breathed, willing—

The cloudiness became a shape. For a single moment Holly thought she saw a face clear and bright. Then the cloud returned. Tamar sighed, leaning weakly back against the tall support of the chair. Her eyes were closed. Holly longed to go to her. Only, in this dreamworld she was rooted to the floor. That mirrored face—had she really seen, in Tamar's strange mirror, a small, clear reflection of her
father
?

How could her father have come to Tamar's house? Though Holly looked almost wildly around the room now in search, he was not there. But at that moment Tamar's eyes opened. She looked straight at Holly, catching her own gaze, holding it fast. Holly saw Tamar's lips shape words. Though she could not hear them, she knew exactly what those words were:

“By all the powers of land and sea,
As I do say, ‘So mote it be.'
By all the might of moon and sun,
As I will, it shall be done!”

Then, again, more slowly, with a pause between each word as if to impress the message on Holly's memory: “So mote it be!”

Tamar's hand was raised; her fingers moved in the air tracing a sign which glowed for an instant, as if she had written so with fire. And then—

Holly awoke in her own bed. The dark was complete. Around her were the sounds of the barn-house—as if it reassured itself each night, when no one was awake to hear, that it was still standing sturdy and complete.

Holly's lips shaped Tamar's last message. “So mote it be!” She had not a single doubt that she knew its meaning. There would be another telegram. Oh, maybe not tomorrow, or next week, or even next month, but there would
be
one—a good one, this time. Then their own small world would change again, from the dark Left to the sunny Right. Wherever Tamar now was, she had worked her own magic for Dad. He would be coming home!

However, now it was left to Holly to work magic, too—the magic for Dimsdale. She did not have Tamar's powers, she had only her own will and whatever she could think of. But as she willed, it should be done!

They did not have a chance on Sunday morning to go out and see the maze. Sunday was church day, again Holly must curb her impatience. She knew also that she could not share, even with Judy, her last dream. Somehow she was very certain that it would break Tamar's magic if she talked about it.