The Thief of Always

V

The Prisoners

The temperature had risen while Harvey had been at lunch. A heat-haze hovered over the lawn (which was lusher and more thick with flowers than he remembered) and it made the trees around the House shimmer.

He headed toward them, calling Wendell's name as he went. There was no reply. He glanced back toward the House, thinking he might see Wendell at one of the windows, but they were all reflecting the pristine blue. He looked from House to heavens. There was not a cloud in sight.

And now a suspicion stole upon him, which grew into a certainty as his gaze wandered back to the shimmering copse and the flowers underfoot. During the hour he'd spent in the cool of the kitchen the season had changed. Summer had come to Mr. Hood's Holiday House; a summer as magical as the spring that had preceded it.

That was why the sky was so faultlessly blue, and the birds making such music. The leaf-laden branches were no less content; nor the blossoms in the grass, nor the bees that buzzed from bloom to bloom, gathering the season's bounty. All were in bliss.

It would not be a long season, Harvey guessed. If the spring had been over in a morning, then most likely this perfect summer would not outlast the afternoon.

I'd better make the most of it, he thought, and hurried in search of Wendell. He finally discovered his friend sitting in the shade of the trees, with a pile of comics at his side.

"Wanna sit down and read?" he asked.

"Maybe later," said Harvey. "First I want to go look at this lake you were talking about. Are you going to come?"

"What for? I told you it's no fun."

"All right, I'll go on my own."

"You won't stay long," Wendell remarked, and went back to his reading.

Though Harvey had a good idea of the lake's general whereabouts, the bushes on that side of the House were thick and thorny, and it took him several minutes to find a way through them. By the time he caught sight of the lake itself the sweat on his face and back was clammy, and his arms had been scratched and bloodied by barbs.

As Wendell had predicted, the lake wasn't worth the trouble. It was large-so large that the far side was barely visible-but gloomy and dreary both the lake and the dark stones around it covered with a film of green scum. There was a legion of flies buzzing around in search of something rotten to feed on, and Harvey guessed they'd have no trouble finding a feast. This was a place where dead things belonged.

He was about to leave when a movement in the shadows caught his eye. Somebody was standing further along the bank, almost eclipsed by the mesh of thicket. He moved a few paces closer to the lake, and saw that it was Lulu. She was perched on the slimy stones at the very edge of the water, gazing into their depths.

Speaking in a near whisper for fear he'd startle her, Harvey said:

"It looks cold."

She glanced up at him, her face full of confusion, and then without a word of reply-turned and bounded away through the bushes.

"Wait!" Harvey called, hurrying toward the lake.

Lulu had already disappeared, however, leaving the thicket shaking. He might have gone in pursuit of her, but the sound of bubbles breaking in the lake took his gaze to the waters, and there, moving just below the coating of scum, he saw the fish. They were almost as large as he was, their gray scales stained and encrusted, their bulbous eyes turned up toward the surface like the eyes of prisoners in a watery pit.

They were watching him, he was certain of that, and their scrutiny made him shudder. Were they hungry, he wondered, and praying to their fishy gods that he'd slip on the stones and tumble in? Or were they wishing he'd come with a rod and a line, so that they could be hauled from the depths and put out of their misery?

What a life, he thought. No sun to warm them; no flowers to sniff at or games to play. Just the deep, dark waters to circle in; and circle, and circle, and circle.

It made him dizzy just watching, and he feared that if he lingered much longer he'd lose his balance and join them. Gasping with relief he turned his back on the sight, and returned into the sunlight as fast as the barbs would allow.

Wendell was still sitting underneath the tree. He had two bottles of ice-cold soda in the grass beside him, and lobbed one to Harvey as he approached.

"Well?" he said.

"You were right," Harvey replied.

"Nobody in their right minds ever goes there."

"I saw Lulu."

"What did I tell you?" Wendell crowed. "Nobody in their right minds."

"And those fish-"

"-yeah, I know," Wendell said, pulling a face. "Ugly boogers, aren't they?"

"Why would Mr. Hood have fish like that? I mean, everything else is so beautiful. The lawns, the House, the orchard..."

"Who cares?" said Wendell.

"I do," said Harvey. "I want to know everything there is to know about this place."

"Why?"

"So I can tell my mom and dad about it when I go home."

"Home?" said Wendell. "Who needs it? We've got everything we need here."

"I'd still like to know how all this works. Is there some kind of machine making the seasons change?"

Wendell pointed up through the branches at the sun. "Does that look mechanical to you?" he said. "Don't be a dope, Harvey. This is all real. It's magic, but it's real."

"You think so?"

"It's too hot to think," Wendell replied. "Now sit down and shut up." He tossed a few comics in Harvey's direction. "Look through these. Find yourself a monster for tonight."

"What's happening tonight?"

"Halloween, of course," Wendell said. "It happens every night."

Harvey plunked himself down beside Wendell, opened his soda, and began to leaf through the comics, thinking as he leafed and sipped that maybe Wendell was right, and it was too hot to think. However this miraculous place worked, it seemed real enough. The sun was hot, the soda was cold, the sky was blue, the grass was green. What more did he need to know?

Somewhere in the middle of these musings he must have dozed off, because he woke with a start to find that the sun was no longer dappling the ground around him, and Wendell was no longer reading at his side.

He reached for his soda, but the bottle had fallen over, and the scent of sweet cherry had attracted hundreds of ants. They were crawling over it and into it, many drowning for their greed.

As he got to his feet the first real breeze he'd felt since noon blew, and a leaf, its edges sere, spiraled down to land at his feet.

"Autumn..." he murmured to himself.

Until this moment, standing beneath the creaking boughs watching the wind shake down the leaves, autumn had always seemed to him the saddest of seasons. It meant that summer was over, and the nights would be growing long and cold. But now, as the drizzle of leaves became a deluge, and the patter of acorns and chestnuts a drumming, he laughed to see and hear its coming. By the time he was out from under the trees he had leaves in his hair, and down his back, and was kicking them up with every racing step.

As he reached the porch, the first clouds he'd seen all afternoon crept over the sun, and their shadow made the House, which had wavered in the heat of the afternoon like a mirage, suddenly loom, dark and solid.

"You're real," he said, as he stood panting on the porch. "You are, aren't you?"

He started to laugh at the foolishness of talking to a House, but the smile went from his face as a voice, so soft he was barely certain he heard it, said:

"What do you think, child?"

He looked for the speaker, but there was nobody at the threshold, nor out on the porch, nor on the steps behind him.

"Who said that?" he demanded.

There was no answer, which he was glad of. It hadn't been a voice at all, he told himself. It had been a creak of the boards underfoot, or the rustling of dry leaves in the grass. But he stepped into the House with his heart beating a little faster, reminding himself as he went that questions weren't welcome here.

What did it matter, anyway, he thought, whether this was a real place or a dream? It felt real, and that was all that mattered.

Satisfied with this, he raced through the House into the kitchen where Mrs. Griffin was weighing the table down with treats.