Ted said, “We were sent back, by a man in a red robe.”

Laura saw Fence’s head come up, like that of a cat who hears you open the refrigerator. But Randolph said, in the same unfriendly voice, “Wherefore did you let him do so?”

“He said that if we didn’t, everything we strove to prevent would come to pass.”

“Who was he?” said Fence. His voice was merely neutral, but in him this was as great a change as the hostility in Randolph.

“The mailbox said Apsinthion.”

“That’s wormwood,” said Fence, with a kind of skeptical surprise. “What manner of man was he?”

Laura wished they could all sit down. But the room contained one sewing-table, on which Fence was still sitting, and Agatha’s high-backed chair with the tapestry cushions, on which she would have felt wrong sitting even before they left.

“He looked like you and Randolph,” said Ted, “only mixed together. He had a house full of mirrors.”

Fence and Randolph turned to one another; for a bare instant everything seemed familiar. Then Fence looked away, sharply, and said to Ted, “What else?”

“Okay,” said Ted. He began with their encounter with Claudia in the yard of her house, in their own world; and ended with their stepping through the mirror into this room. At no point in his narrative did Fence or Randolph ask for any clarification. Randolph, in fact, showed no reaction whatsoever. Fence took the story in as though he were judging it for a contest. Ted saved the three riddles and the messages for last. The riddles evoked no response. “All may yet be very well” made Fence roll his eyes. “La Belle Dame sans Merci hath thee in thrall” produced, finally, a reaction from Randolph.

“What tongue is that? What mean those words?”

“French,” said Ted, gloomily. “I don’t know.”

“Two unhandily returned is already two more—” said Randolph; Fence glanced at him and he stopped.

“It sounds,” said Laura, “like it means ‘the beautiful lady who never says thank you.’ ”

Fence actually smiled at this, but Randolph went on looking at the floor. Fence said, “Wherefore may we regard these words if we know them not?”

“It’s Randolph who’s supposed to regard them,” said Ted. “You’re supposed to regard Shan’s. All may yet be very well.”

“Anyone may quote Shan,” said Fence, “and most have.”

The devil, thought Laura, can cite Scripture for his purpose. But Shan wasn’t Scripture—was he?

Ted must have been thinking something similar; he said, “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some?”

Fence slid down from the table and strode across the room in a swirl of black. He stopped in front of Ted, and the smell of burning leaves engulfed Laura two feet away. If Ted grew a little more, thought Laura crazily, he would be able to look Fence right in the eye. Fence appeared merely intent, but his voice was furious. “Where read you that?” he said.

“I read it in the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians,” said Ted. “But Edward’s remembering it.”

Laura did not know what Ted had hoped to achieve with this revelation. She herself was relieved; she thought of the dead Prince Edward as an ally. Fence said, “Dear heaven,” in the tone of a man whose child has brought home a stray python.

“What’s the matter?” said Randolph.

“Edward speaks to him,” said Fence, without looking around.

“How?” said Randolph to Ted, not altogether as if he were prepared to believe him.

“In the back of my mind, somehow, or underneath.”

“I suppose,” said Fence wearily to Laura, “that the Princess Laura speaks to thee also?”

“Yes,” said Laura.

“That’s why I thought we might be able to get them back,” said Ted. “We seem to be connected.”

“Fence?” said Randolph; Laura concluded that, whatever Fence understood, Randolph did not.

“You have not read in that book either,” said Fence, turning and staring at him. “But Edward hath.”

“What book?” said Ted.

“This speaking of Edward in the backward of your thoughts,” said Fence, “is a devising of Melanie, that she worked on Shan without his will. He wrote on it in his reports to the Blue Sorcerers, saying, ‘I must be all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.’”

Laura doubted that that was what Saint Paul had been talking about, but this was no time to say so.

“What bearing hath this on the present issue?” Randolph said.

“A moment,” said Fence, and to Ted, “A cardinal did deliver you to this man in red?”

“Then let his minions have the care of them,” said Randolph.

“Randolph, for the love of heaven!” said Fence. “There’s no blame on the children.”

“Is there not?” said Randolph. He jerked a wad of paper out of the long jacket he wore and flung it down on Agatha’s table. The top sheet was covered with Ruth’s round, back-handed writing. She wrote that way because a teacher had once chided the left-handed Patrick for doing it.

“Didn’t Ruth say we didn’t know?” demanded Ted.

“Evil done unknowing yet hath evil effect,” said Randolph.

“Randolph,” said Fence, “that is ice so thin thy feet are wet e’en now. Let be.”

“We thought we might be able to make it up to you,” said Ted.

Scorn drew itself along Randolph’s face like ink spilling on the white tiles of a bathroom floor, and Laura felt cold.

“Randolph,” said Fence; and Randolph shut his mouth. “How?” said Fence to Ted.

“Have you told anybody about that?” asked Ted, pointing to Ruth’s letter.

“No.”

“All right. So we can prevent the civil war by pretending we’re the real royal children. And maybe we can tell you enough about our game for you to figure out what Claudia’s doing and why. And maybe we can get your royal children back for you.”

“It was bravely done,” said Fence, in the kindest voice he had used yet. “But we will do well enough. Do you go to your homes and regard us not.”

“You have got to be kidding,” said Ted. Laura recognized the signs of a monumental fury, and could not decide if she wanted to keep quiet or help him out. “How in the hell,” said Ted, “do you expect us to regard you not? We’ve lived with you for three months; and we lived with you for years before that, really. You’re part of our lives whether you like it or not. And I promise you,” finished Ted, in a dire tone Laura had seldom heard out of him, “that we’ll use whatever power we have to make your lives miserable if you don’t let us stay and help.”

“Oh, that’s logic indeed,” began Fence, in a tone of exasperated amusement; but he was overridden.

“That,” said Randolph, not loudly at all, “is the outside of enough. Begone from here and do your worst, or stay and regard ours. There are dungeons in High Castle deep enough for the likes of you.”

Laura thought that Ted should have known better than to threaten Randolph.

“All right,” said Ted. “All right. May I remind you of something? You—both of you—swore me an oath.”

Randolph’s face was so terrible that Laura looked away from it. But Fence, after a moment of anger as monumental as Ted’s, simply sat down on the floor in the midst of his black wizard’s robes and laughed until he cried.

There was a petrifying pause. Laura looked only at Fence. His giving up of dignity hurt less than Ted’s dirty tactics or Randolph’s loss of control. He had never been very dignified anyway. When he stopped wheezing and pushed his hair out of his red face, Laura, greatly daring, edged around Ted, sat down beside Fence, and offered him her handkerchief.

“Shan’s mercy,” said Fence, taking it and blowing his nose vigorously. “Shan’s mercy on the lot of us, it’s better than we deserve. Thy lessons from Edward were well learned, my lad.”

“Faugh!” said Randolph, still not loudly. “Had they been well learned, I were dead long since.”

Fence looked up at him, all hilarity gone. “No,” he said. “Those were your lessons. Not Edward’s. And not mine.”

They were going to start arguing again. Laura looked hopefully at Ted.

Ted took a very deep breath and pushed his fists into the pockets of his jeans. Laura knew he wanted to yell. But you didn’t yell at Fence and Randolph. As King Edward, Ted might have come to it in the next few months; and they might have let him get away with it. But as Ted, he had to start all over; worse than that, because they didn’t want him. All the kindness and trust he had had from them these three months had been for Edward, and the actions that they had approved of were not, now, marks in his favor but rather evidence of betrayal.

“You’d better go,” said Fence again. “And of your courtesy, save your ill-wishing for more worthy foes.”

“Now look,” said Ted, not yelling. “I didn’t come back here for my health. A sinister man came close to making us come back. He asked three riddles you haven’t even considered, and he gave us one quotation from your world and one from ours. You’re not thinking. All you want to do is get rid of us. I wouldn’t want to look at us either, if I were you. But we didn’t kill those kids. Claudia did it. And she did to us the exact same things that we did to you—but she knew it. We’re as mad at her as you are.”

Laura admired this logic. He should have tried it before the threats.

Fence quirked the corner of his mouth and looked at Randolph, who, without noticing, slapped his hand down on Agatha’s table and started to speak. Fence, with his habitual gesture, put a hand on Randolph’s wrist. Randolph turned on him with a ferocious expression. Fence took his hand away.

“I would cry you mercy,” said Randolph to Fence, “were there mercy in the universe to nick the edge of my iniquity.”

“Take less pleasure in thy mouthings,” said Fence, in an astonishingly deadly voice, “and thou shalt have mercy enow.”

There was a pause worse than the last one. Then Randolph said, “What, a villain that mouthes not?” and without waiting for an answer, turned to Ted. Laura saw that Fence looked more relieved than otherwise.

“Do we grant,” said Randolph to Ted, in a cooler voice than he had used with Fence, “that until we have studied what to do, ’tis better for the country that nothing seem to be amiss, will you in turn agree that you are nowise trained for statecraft and that for you to take up your duties would be disaster?”

“Well,” said Ted, “I don’t know about disaster, but I don’t really want all my duties. What do you propose to do?”

“Randolph is Regent,” said Fence.

“I have told you, no,” said Randolph.

“What about you, Fence?” said Laura. “Can’t you help Ted?”

“In the end,” said Fence, “what Edward orders, that must we accomplish. But if you will agree to take my guidance, Edward, and to gainsay my advice only under desperate conditions, I think we will deal very well.”

“That’s fine with me,” said Ted, quickly.

“Excellent,” said Fence. “Now. For all to seem as it was, it is needful that we retrieve your companions from their exile. They are gone by way of the green sword under the bottle trees, and may be recovered by that means?”

“Well, yes and no,” said Ted. Laura was rather taken aback by the speed with which plans were being made, but Ted seemed to be following them well enough. “We can get to where they are that way. But then we’ll have to persuade them to come back.”

“It liked them well enough before,” observed Randolph.

“It didn’t like Patrick,” said Ted. “He’s like Andrew—he doesn’t believe in magic. Being here just drove him crazy.”

“Well, we will try what persuasion we may,” said Fence. “And in any case ’twere folly to leave so potent a weapon lying about in the woods like an abandoned doll.”

Laura thought this was unfair, given all the trouble they had taken to make sure Fence knew where the swords were.

“What means of persuasion do you suggest?” said Ted.

“I had thought to come with you,” said Fence.

Laura let out a delighted chortle. Ted started at Fence for a moment. “Be warned,” he said, “that Laura and I have never been to Australia. We won’t know how to act, necessarily.”

“How to act,” said Fence, “will be to find those three privily and speak to them so. Where cometh out this path to Australia?”

“I think Patrick said the back forty.”

Fence looked patient.

“It’s on a farm,” said Ted, who had only the faintest idea of what a back forty was himself.

“Well enough,” said Fence. “I was born on a farm.”

Ted and Laura both stared at him. He picked up Ruth’s letter from the table where Randolph had thrown it, and held it out to them. It did not take them long to read it. Laura admired the style. They handed it back to Fence, and he stood up shaking out the folds of the absurd starry robe he wore. “What do we stay for?” he said.

They left Randolph sitting in the dim room among the glints of polished wood and glass and the muted colors of the tapestries. Laura preferred not to wonder what he was thinking.

At the head of the stairs Fence paused. “Garments,” he said. He fingered the shoulder of Ted’s shirt, and smiled very faintly. “You never had these from the West Tower,” he said. “Men go garbed thus in your country?”

“Yes,” said Ted, smiling back.

“Well,” said Fence, “to the West Tower we must go, all the same, and find somewhat more suited to a farm.”

The warm, cinnamon-scented air of the West Tower enclosed them comfortingly. Late sunlight blazed in through its nine windows, some gold as it ought to be, and some a violent pink reflection off the outer walls of High Castle. The room was piled and heaped and hung with clothes, most even less suited to a farm in Australia—or anywhere else—than Fence’s robe.

Fence seemed to know his way about, and quickly found a plain muslin shirt. But they could not locate anything resembling trousers. Ted, appealed to, said firmly that a shirt and hose would be even odder than the starry robe.

Laura remembered suddenly that, if it were June in Illinois, it would be winter in Australia, and that even in the twentieth century some people wore cloaks in winter. Fence received this information dubiously, but said he’d as lief swelter in a cloak as rummage here any further. They found a black cloak for Fence, and a red one for Laura, who remembered Claudia and wished it were any other color, and a green one for Ted, and went down to the stables, where the grooms had looked at them oddly but consented to pack the garments into saddlebags and saddle two horses.

“Why not three?” said Fence.

“Laura can ride with me,” said Ted, climbing onto Edward’s horse. “Can you give her a boost?”

Fence did as he was asked, but looked at Laura once she was safely behind Ted. “Wherefore this unaccustomed shyness?”

“I hate horses,” said Laura, with violence. She hated horses, and Princess Laura loved them, and it was an enormous relief to be able to tell the truth for once.

Fence’s face closed up like a brand-new paperback. Maybe, she thought, they should just keep on playing their parts.

The day was cooling into evening as they rode away from High Castle. The distant eastern sky was piled with little round clouds, and above that was an improbable dark blue. It was too early for stars. Three crows flapped slowly over their heads, and some little bird whistled and piped in the grasses. The huge plain still gave off its scents of baked grass and dust. Laura felt very odd. Not four hours ago she and her brother and their cousins had ridden this way, resolved to give up the Secret Country. It seemed beyond the bounds of reason that now she and Ted were going to Australia with Fence. For the first time since she came to this country, the power and presence of magic, the difference it made in plans and actions, became clear to her.

When they came to the Well of the White Witch, the western sky was still spilling color, but it was dark enough for them to see the Well’s glow. Like those unexpected and disconcerting walls of High Castle, it was a vivid pink granite. It lit the tall grass around it as if it were a bonfire.

“Fence!” called Ted. “We usually leave the horses here.” He persuaded their own horse to stop. Laura wondered if the horses they escaped on had managed to get home yet.

Fence had turned his horse back to them and dismounted. He came over and held up his hands for Laura, who slid down and managed to land on her feet. Ted dismounted. “Oh, hell,” he said. “Ruth always whispered sorcerous words at the horses.”

“Well, my powers are other,” said Fence, “but I have speech enow for that.” He laid his hand on the neck of Ted’s horse and said, “Thou, my steed, may graze thy fill, for I must dismount and walk.” He went over to his own horse and repeated it.

Ted and Laura stared at each other in the glow of the well. Their mother had sung that song to them.

“What spell is that, Fence?” said Ted.

“One of Shan’s,” said Fence. He pulled the three cloaks out of the saddlebags and handed them around. He put his own on, so Ted and Laura followed suit. Fence said, “Now lead on.”

They climbed the bank above the Well, and went lightly along the wooden bridge over the little stream, and slid and scrabbled along the stream’s edge until the bottle tree bulged out of the darkness at them.

Fence put both hands on its smooth bark and whistled under his breath. “I can well believe,” he said, “that where this tree is native, all the seasons are upsodown.”

Ted rummaged cautiously in the hollow made by the bottle tree’s many trunks, and drew up Melanie’s sword by its jeweled hilt. It was not glowing.

“I am tame,” said Fence, as Ted hesitated. “Pronounce.”

“We all need to hold onto the sword,” said Ted, “and then somehow duck under this mess and come out the other side.”

“We’re none of us so large as we might be,” said Fence, cheerfully. “Do you lead the way, and we’ll set the Lady Laura between us.” His voice faltered a little on Laura’s title, and Laura thought that Fence had almost forgotten that they were not his own royal children.

They arranged themselves as he had said, wound their hands around the hilt of the sword, and ducked awkwardly under the bowed branches of the bottle tree. Then they were squelching over short grass that soaked Laura’s tennis shoes, and blinking in a gray light, and shivering in a straight, hard wind that whipped her hair back so fast it hurt as if Ted had pulled it.

Compared to winter in Pennsylvania this was paltry. The grass was still bright green, almost the color of Melanie’s sword when that weapon chose to display its light; and in this colorless world, the grass seemed to glow itself. The squelchy land rolled away before them, up and down and up again in a towering slope touched here and there with shapely pale trees. Their bark was peeling off in long strips, as though the wind were tearing them to pieces. A fence, also shaking in the wind, and rattling a little, ran down the middle of the slope and then bent sharply away from them.

“It isn’t just winter,” said Ted, tipping his head up at the gray sky and shaking the hair off his face. “It’s morning.”

“That’s tidy,” said Fence, a little absently. “How late do your cousins arise?”

“I don’t know, in the winter,” said Ted, and then, catching Laura’s appalled glance, “Oh, hell.”

“School,” said Laura. “What day is it?”

“By my reckoning,” said Fence, gently, “it is the fifth day of September in the four hundred and ninetieth year since King John threw o’er the Dragon King.”

A red bird flew out of the bottle tree, circled the three of them, whistling, and took off over the hill. Well, thought Laura, that’s that.

“That’ll fetch them,” said Ted, somewhat too smugly.

Fence caught hold of Ted’s cloak. “What knowest thou?”

“We keep being rescued by cardinals.”

Fence let his breath out and shook the fold of the cloak a little. “What art thou?” he said.

“Ask Claudia,” said Ted.

A maniacal barking made itself apparent, the persistent yap of a collie. A black-and-white streak, flapping behind it a long yellow leash, shot down the hill and halted three feet away from them, growling like a cageful of tigers. Laura stared. Shan was a lazy dog who wouldn’t even run races with you.

Fence stood quite still, keeping hold of Ted’s cloak. “Is this thy rescue?” he said.

“It’s just Shan,” said Ted. “Good dog, Shan, good boy.” The dog, a nondescript, sharp-nosed, shaggy creature who had looked much more like a collie when he was a puppy, wagged his tail and went on growling. Laura supposed he remembered her and Ted, but didn’t care for Fence.

Fence said, “Thy dog’s called Shan?”

“It’s Ruth and Ellen and Patrick’s dog.”

“They weren’t allowed to call him Prospero,” offered Laura.

Fence turned and stared at her; Shan growled louder and Fence took no notice. “Prospero?” said Fence.

“Prospero,” said Laura, bravely, “is a magician in a play.”

“Thy play? Thou hast made him up also?”

“No, William Shakespeare did.”

“Shan!” yelled a distant and familiar voice.

“Here they come,” said Ted.

Three figures came over the hill, two short and one tall. Ruth was not wearing a skirt, as had been her wearisome custom when they played together, but she was, to Laura’s eyes, very oddly dressed in gray corduroy pants, pink legwarmers already splotched with mud, pink-and-gray running shoes, and many layers of shirts of pink or gray or white whose tails hung out at varying lengths and made her look as if she were wearing a jester’s costume. Laura thought she ought to tie bells to all the hems.

Patrick and Ellen, on her heels, were dressed reassuringly in brand-new jeans—Aunt Kim must have noticed that the old ones were too small—battered red corduroy jackets, and dirty tennis shoes. Ellen had found, somewhere, a black wool beret like the velvet caps the pages wore in High Castle. Patrick had a blue stocking-cap falling out of his jacket pocket. Ellen’s and Ruth’s cloudy black hair tangled in all directions in the wind. Patrick’s pale brown, straight hair was only a little ruffled. All three of them wore bulging knapsacks.

Ellen caught Laura’s glance immediately, with a look half of greeting and half of alert bewilderment. Patrick was so expressionless Laura knew he was upset. Ruth looked the way she used to if you burst into her room without knocking when she was writing her journal.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Ruth, stopping next to the dog. Her harried glance brushed Fence, faltered, and settled firmly on Ted.

Patrick got down on his knees in the wet grass and laid an arm across the dog’s back. Shan stopped growling. Ellen grinned at Fence, but Patrick did not look at any of them. Laura supposed that seeing Fence in his own back yard was upsetting all Patrick’s theories.

“That’s a fine greeting,” said Ted to Ruth.

“We’re going to miss the school bus.”

“Ruth,” said Ellen. “They brought Fence. Forget about the school bus.”

“You have to come back,” said Ted.

“No way in hell,” said Patrick, still without looking up.

“There’s a fine, open spirit,” said Fence. All three of them jumped at the sound of his voice.

“Fence, is it really you?” said Ellen, peering at him from under her hat.

“Turn that question on thyself,” said Fence, rather sharply.

“Oh, hell,” said Ruth. “You read my letter.”

“Wherefore writ, if not to be read?”

“Well, but I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“It sounded fine,” said Ted.

“It sounded stupid,” said Ruth. “I was in a terrible hurry.”

“It was well enough,” said Fence.

“Fence,” said Ruth, “I’m sorry.”

“Thou hast said so already, in the letter,” said Fence, and smiled. “Be of good cheer. The fault’s not yours. But in good earnest we desire you back, to play your parts yet for a little while.”

“Ellen has now missed her bus,” said Patrick, “and Ruth and I will miss ours in ten minutes.”

“You’d better tell us,” said Ellen.

It was beginning to rain, but nobody suggested finding shelter. They stood there with misty drops gathering on them while Fence told Ted and Laura’s story.

“Good,” said Ellen, when he had finished. “Let’s do it. I knew it was wrong to leave.”

“Good?” said Ruth. “Claudia can look at a piece of glass and make Randolph do what she likes, Claudia did make us do what she liked, and you say good?”

“So let’s get her,” said Ellen.

“You won’t make Ted fight Randolph?” said Ruth to Fence.

“Stars in heaven, lady, why should I meddle so?”

“Randolph’ll make Ted fight Randolph,” said Patrick.

“I’ll strive to prevent him,” said Fence.

“Well, I’m willing to risk it,” said Ted. “Do remember, can’t you, that the red man said everything we were afraid of would happen if we didn’t go back?”

“It can’t all happen,” said Patrick. “You can’t kill Randolph if you aren’t there.”

“Ruth’s letter told Randolph how to get here,” said Ted.

Ellen stood up. “Well, let’s go,” she said.

“I’m in the middle of an experiment,” said Patrick.

“Does he have to come?” said Ruth to Ted. “If he was missing, wouldn’t that be an excuse to go after Claudia?”

“We have been after Claudia,” said Fence, poking one arm out of his cloak and wiping rain off his forehead. Laura stared at the shift and glimmer of his starry sleeve, waiting for one of the points of light to swell into vision. Nothing happened. Fence went on talking, in a tone of wry patience. “We have accusations. Mind you that she tried to stab me on the stairs.”

“Besides,” said Laura, “won’t your parents miss you and Ellen?”

“Sure they will,” said Ruth, grinning maliciously. “Pat can explain to them.”

“You better watch it,” said Patrick. “Our parents aren’t suspicious, but Ted and Laura’s are.”

“That’s true,” said Ruth, sobering at once. “Mom just thought we’d grown and she hadn’t noticed until now; she’s been awfully busy trying to run this blasted farm. And we’d have to dye our hair green and put safety pins through all our finger-joints before Daddy would notice. But your mother called me Mary Rose, and your father called Patrick Thomas the Rhymer.”

Laura thought that Patrick was about as unlike Thomas the Rhymer as anybody could get, and just managed to turn her laugh into a snort.

“It isn’t funny,” said Ruth, undeceived. “They’ve read all the right books. They think we’ve been in Elfland, and that’s really not so far off the mark.”

“It is,” said Patrick, in his most annoying voice, “about as far off the mark as you can get. Time stands still in Elfland and goes along as usual here. By that definition, this is Elfland.”

“Well, it is for Fence,” said Laura.

“Don’t think about it,” said Ruth, a little wildly, not to Fence but to the rest of them. “I just meant Patrick’s right. They’re suspicious.”

“They were joking,” said Ted. “They do it all the time.”

“Not just joking,” said Ruth. “Believe me.”

“Well, okay, so it’s all or nothing,” said Patrick. “So persuade me to come back.”

“Patrick,” said Ellen, “you can’t get anything done while we’re gone anyway, because we’ll have to fix the time again.”

“I told you,” said Patrick, “we didn’t fix it last time.”

“No, that’s right,” said Ted. “Laura and I left home at night, and when we got back home it was afternoon.”

Patrick said, “We left here in the daytime, and when we got back it was night. We’d lost twelve or thirteen hours.”

“Well, that’s not so bad,” said Ellen.

“You’ve got a remarkably selective memory,” said Patrick. “Shall I recite for you what Dad said? And what Mom did?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Ted. “The red man fixed the time for us, and I bet that holds for the whole planet.”

“That’s really persuasive, Ted,” said Patrick.

“What’s the matter with you?” said Laura. She had to say something violent to squash her impulse to run over that hill, or in whatever direction was necessary, and find her parents, and forget about adventure and philosophy and riddles. She went on, loudly, “So what if we get in trouble? Isn’t it worth it to save the Secret Country? Why don’t you worry about the rest of this when we’ve done the important stuff?”

Ted looked at her; he knew what was wrong. “Well?” he said to Patrick. “What is the matter with us?”

“You are soft in the head,” said Patrick. “I am practical. Why should I want to save the Secret Country?”

Fence stared down at Patrick, who still knelt with his arm around the dog. “Consider it,” said Fence, in a light and very terrible voice, “the price of thy fencing lessons and thy room and board these three months.”

“I’m not at all convinced,” said Patrick, perfectly coolly, “that you roomed and boarded anything except my imagination.”

Laura felt a shiver go over her skin. When all this was only a game, Patrick had played Fence, and he had used just such a tone and just such a level look from cold blue eyes as he was turning on Fence now. Fence had an altogether less alarming face, but his demeanor made up for it.

“The lunatic, the lover, and the wizard,” said Fence, “are of imagination all compact. What art thou, then, that setteth the housing of thine so low?”

“Jesus Christ!” said Patrick, passionately. Nobody reproved him for swearing. “Don’t quote Shakespeare at me! All right. All right. I’ll come back. But I promise you, I am not leaving again no matter who doesn’t want what to happen until I have figured out what the hell is going on. Is that clear?”

“Abundantly,” said Ruth, in her dryest tones.

“And also,” said Patrick, “I want to test whether time stands still here while we’re in the Secret Country.”

“Okay,” said Ellen. “You just take off your nice watch and leave it out in the rain, and we’ll come back tomorrow and see what time it says.”

“It’s good to two hundred meters,” said Patrick, calmly. He unbuckled the strap and laid the watch down in the vivid grass, where it said, in evil red characters, 8:45.

“Is it a bargain, then?” said Patrick, looking up at Fence.

“Oh, of a certainty,” said Fence, still in that voice. “For I most earnestly desire these discoveries also.”

“All right,” said Ted, whom this exchange seemed to have made extremely uneasy. “Send Shan home, Patrick, and let’s go.” Laura remembered other bargains and their outcomes, and didn’t blame him. He caught her glance, and shrugged resignedly, as their mother would do when their father got silly. Then he said to Fence, “Let’s get out of here.”