On the steps.
You get out of bed and find your flashlight. Not because you are brave, but because you cannot wait there in the dark.
There is nothing in the narrow, cold little stairwell outside your door. Nothing in the big hallway of the second floor. You shine your light quickly from end to end. Aunt Julie is breathing through her nose, but there is nothing frightening about that sound; you know what it is: only Aunt Julie, asleep, breathing loud through her nose.
Nothing on the stairs coming up.
You go back to your room, turn off your flashlight, and get into bed. When you are almost sleeping there is the scrabbling sound of hard claws on the floorboards and a rough tongue touching your fingertips. “Don’t be afraid, Master; it is only Bruno.” And you feel him, warm with his own warm and smelling of his own smell, lying beside your bed.
Then it is morning. The bedroom is cold, and there is no one in it but yourself. You go into the bathroom where there is a thing like a fan but with hot electric wires to dress.
Downstairs Mother is up already with a cloth thing tied over her hair, and so are Aunt May and Aunt Julie, sitting at the table with coffee and milk and big slices of fried ham. Aunt Julie says, “Hello, Tackie,” and Mother smiles at you. There is a plate out for you already and you have ham and toast.
All day the three women are cleaning and putting up decorations—red and gold paper masks Aunt Julie made to hang on the wall, and funny lights that change color and go around—and you try to stay out of the way, and bring in wood for a fire in the big fireplace that almost never gets used. Jason comes, and Aunt May and Aunt Julie don’t like him, but he helps some and goes into town in his car for things he forgot to buy before. He won’t take you, this time. The wind comes in around the window, but they let you alone in your room and it’s even quiet up there because they’re all downstairs.
Ransom looked at the enigmatic girl incredulously.
“You do not believe me,” she said. It was a simple statement of fact, without anger or accusation.
“You’ll have to admit it’s pretty hard to believe,” he temporized. “A city older than civilization, buried in the jungle here on this little island.”
Talar said tonelessly, “When you were as he”—she pointed at the dog-man—“is now, Lemuria was queen of this sea. All that is gone, except my city. Is not that enough to satisfy even Time?”
Bruno plucked at Ransom’s sleeve. “Do not go, Master! Beast-men go sometimes, beast-men Dr. Death does not want; few come back. They are very evil at that place.”
“You see?” A slight smile played about Talar’s ripe lips. “Even your slave testifies for me. My city exists.”
“How far?” Ransom asked curtly.
“Perhaps half a day’s travel through the jungle.” The girl paused, as though afraid to say more.
“What is it?” Ransom asked.
“You will lead us against Dr. Death? We wish to cleanse this island which is our home.”
“Sure. I don’t like him any more than your people do. Maybe less.”
“Even if you do not like my people you will lead them?”
“If they’ll have me. But you’re hiding something. What is it?”
“You see me, and I might be a woman of your own people. Is that not so?” They were moving through the jungle again now, the dog-man reluctantly acting as rear guard.
“Very few girls of my people are as beautiful as you are, but otherwise yes.”
“And for that reason I am high priestess to my people, for in me the ancient blood runs pure and sweet. But it is not so with all.” Her voice sunk to a whisper. “When a tree is very old, and yet still lives, sometimes the limbs are strangely twisted. Do you understand?”
“Tackie? Tackie are you in there?”
“Uh-huh.” You put the book inside your sweater.
“Well, come and open this door. Little boys ought not to lock their doors. Don’t you want to see the company?” You open, and Aunt May’s a gypsy with long hair that isn’t hers around her face and a mask that is only at her eyes.
Downstairs cars are stopping in front of the house and Mother is standing at the door dressed in Day-Glo robes that open way down the front but cover her arms almost to the ends of her fingers. She is talking to everyone as they come in, and you see her eyes are bright and strange the way they are sometimes when she dances by herself and talks when no one is listening.
A woman with a fish for a head and a shiny, silver dress is Aunt Julie. A doctor with a doctor’s coat and listening things and a shiny thing on his head to look through is Dr. Black, and a soldier in a black uniform with a pirate thing on his hat and a whip is Jason. The big table has a punch bowl and cakes and little sandwiches and hot bean dip. You pull away when the gypsy is talking to someone and take some cakes and sit under the table watching legs.
There is music and some of the legs dance, and you stay under there a long time.
Then a man’s and a girl’s legs dance close to the table and there is suddenly a laughing face in front of you— Captain Ransom’s. “What are you doing under there, Tack? Come out and join the party.” And you crawl out, feeling very small instead of older, but older when you stand up. Captain Ransom is dressed like a castaway in a ragged shirt and pants torn off at the knees, but all clean and starched. His love beads are seeds and seashells, and he has his arm around a girl with no clothes at all, just jewelry.
“Tack, this is Talar of the Long Eyes.”
You smile and bow and kiss her hand, and are nearly as tall as she. All around people are dancing or talking, and no one seems to notice you. With Captain Ransom on one side of Talar and you on the other you thread your
