He
awoke as slowly as humanly possible. With eyes still closed, he lazily
identified the various busy bird voices outside his open window. The
house was silent. No alarm, no radio, no parental morning cheeriness.
He shifted slightly to get the maximum morning sun on his stomach,
stretched one leg, then the other, then each arm. Finally, with a sigh
of pure pleasure he opened one eye, surveyed the familiar clutter of his
room, and uttered the single most pleasant word he could imagine:
"Summer!"
Opening
the other eye, he gave several minutes serious thought to his
activities for the day. He could take the issue of Scientific American
he had almost finished up to the hayloft on the Carter farm next door,
or stay right there in bed and catch up on the back issues of X-men
piled within reach on the floor. No. The absolute most perfect way to
start summer vacation was down on the river. All alone, in his private
place, on top of the big rock that hung over the bend, invisible from
the river behind its screen of willow branches. He could almost feel
the sun warmed stone against his chest - no, that was the sun right here
in his room. And besides, he was hungry, now that he thought of it.
Maybe Mom had put out some breakfast for him before leaving for work.
Dad would be long gone, too; meteorologists actually liked to be up at
dawn, figuring out what the rest of the day would be like.
Grabbing
the pair of shorts he fully intended to wear all day, every day, all
summer - until his Mom made him change - he pulled them on, struggling
to pull an old Tshirt over his head at the same time. Figuring that was
as much energy as he was likely to exert all day, he ambled down to the
kitchen. There was a bowl of blueberries on the table and a slice of
melon and even his favorite bagels - pumpernickel raisin. After
smearing a generous amount of cream cheese on a bagel half and scarfing
down the melon and berries, he went outside and headed down the front
walk, walking a bit gingerly. His tender "winter" feet were not used
to even the small pebbles on the path. By the end of summer he knew
he'd be able to dance barefoot on hot coals without feeling a thing.
Everything
looked new and old at the same time. The same old mailbox, the same
old road, but gilded with the late morning summer sun they had an air of
promise. Something good was going to happen today, he just felt it.
But it would have to come to him, because his plans were to be doing
alot of nothing, maybe just watching the reflections of the ripples on
the willow leaves for the whole day. Smiling to himself, Tom strolled
unhurriedly down the dusty road toward the river.
She
awoke with a start, her eyes flying open. Was she late to school
again? No, it was someone whistling she had heard, not the teakettle
heating water for her coffee. Smiling, she called "Good morning,
Grandfather!" as she swung her feet off the bed and into her sandals.
He didn't hear her, and no wonder, she thought. The kitchen was
probably a mile away. She shook her head, laughing a little as she
contemplated the room which was to be hers, maybe forever. Her eyes
wandered from the plumes of pampas grass, in their elephant's foot
stand, to the mullioned window, draped sedately in green velvet. It's
like living in a story, she thought. She would miss her mother, and
the little dog at the apartment next door, but not the snobby girls at
Hartridge's, that's for sure. And now that Mom had a good part in a
show, Mary knew she wouldn't see much of her anyway, except at holidays.
She
and her Mom had visited Grandfather at Christmas. This had been her
room then, too, and she had already located the "ring of returning" she
had taped to the back of the full length mirror. She glanced at
herself in the slightly tarnished oval, hung at a such a stately angle
in its polished wooden frame, and pulled her hair into a ponytail.
Grandfather
was reading at the kitchen table when she got downstairs, and he gave
her a quick hug, then held her away to take a good look at her. "You
look all right," he decided. "Not missing your Mom too much?" he asked.
"A
little," she replied. "But I feel real good being here. Thank you so
much, grandfather. I hope I can stay forever!" she added impulsively.
"And
whyever not?" he said with a smile. "But my dear, I have quite a bit
of work to attend to this morning. Will you be all right on your own,
at least until lunch?"
"Sure," Mary said confidently. "I'll just explore."
Grandfather
nodded, and picking up his coffee cup, he disappeared down the hall to
his roomy library and shut the door, his mind already engaged in some
argument with an author long dead and buried.
"I guess there's food around here somewhere," Mary decided. "Hey, I could put some stuff in a bag and take it outside."
It
was going to take some getting used to, being able to wander wherever
she liked, but Grandfather had described the extent of the grounds, and
assured her that it didn't really matter, no one was going to chase her
off anywhere in the little town. She made one trip back up to her room
to get her notebook and pencil. She had started a map last night after
her mother had left, but hadn't gotten very far. There was this pond
she remembered seeing on the way in, and Grandfather had talked about a
river somewhere close by.
Humming
Aladdin's theme from her favorite movie, Mary set forth to whatever
adventures awaited her in the sunny uncharted lands beyond the front
door.
Maybe
this summer he would get to that project he had thought about last
summer but not had the time to work on. Bless the dimpled cheeks of
Mrs. Murphy, he thought, no summer school this year. Math and science
were so easy, why couldn't he remember which came first, World War II or
Korea? What good was it being stuck with the nickname "Brainiac" if he
was going to fail history? The memory still rankled, even though Mrs.
M. had pulled him through American History this year with a C by giving
him extra credit on his report on Benjamin Franklin's experiments.
After all, it had been, he admitted, a truly sterling report.
He
almost missed the rock, wading along the shallows and thinking about
static electricity and water. The willows were even thicker than the
last time he was here; you had to know just where to push through. "Ah,
my little kingdom!" he thought with satisfaction. The sun bathed the
rock in light, the river chuckled companionably, and Tom sank happily
into the moss-covered depression he always thought of as The Throne.
No
more than five minutes later his dreamy thoughts were rudely
interrupted by an unfamiliar voice stating in no uncertain terms exactly
what she thought of the wild and thorny blackberry vines that grew in
profusion behind the rock. There were no berries yet, but the white
flowers should have told anybody with eyes to see what to expect.
Tom
frowned and slipped down into the deep cleft in the rock, uncomfortably
aware as always that it seemed more like a cave than a crack. The thin
stream of cool air always present tickled his bare legs unpleasantly,
but he waited silently for the intruder to take her scratched knees
away.
"I'm bleeding! Ow!" Mary stumbled into the open space on top of the rock.
"Oh no, she came through, I thought she'd turn back. Who is she, anyway?" thought Tom in irritation.
The
intruder was angry, too. She was hot, sticky, dirty and now scratched
and bleeding. This country life was not what she had expected.
Suddenly she missed the familiar city quite desperately. As she stamped
her foot and cursed, she lost her balance and began to slide on the
mossy surface. With a cry of despair she fell through the willow
branches and crashed into the river below.
The water was cold, and she was almost stunned, but
struggled to the surface. And screamed! Next to her a boy had appeared
out of nowhere, and he was trying to grab her!
"Hold still, you brat!" he yelled. "You'll go under again if you don't hold on!"
His
arm was strong under her shoulders and despite her fear of him, she was
more afraid of the cold deep water and she clung to him like a proper
drowning victim. The water was not very deep, in fact, and Tom easily
towed her the few feet to the shallows.
"There, stand up now. You're all right," he told her grudgingly.
She
was so grateful for the feeling of solid ground under her feet she
could have hugged him, if she weren't completely embarrassed at the same
time. After a brief struggle, honesty won out, and she just looked at
him and said, "I'm so embarrassed. That was so dumb. I don't know
anything about this wilderness and I just got lost and almost got
drowned. I am so glad you were there. Um, thank you, um."
"Tom," he said without thinking, and instantly regretted it.
"I'm
Mary," she replied. "That's my grandfather's place up there and I'm
staying with him now and I was just exploring because it looked so neat
and oh, I feel like such an idiot!"
"It's pretty steep," he conceded. "I slide off there sometimes later in the summer when it's real hot."
"Oh,"
she said, catching on quicker than he could follow. "This is your
place, isn't it? I mean, I figure it's Grandfather's land, but, well, I
had this bench in the city, it was kind of broken so nobody usually sat
on it, and the pigeons all knew when I would be out there with bread or
something and they would meet me and I'd pretend they were my
subjects..." she ran down. "Why am I telling him that?" she thought,
appalled.
But
he grinned back. "Yeah!" he admitted, "I call this my kingdom. That's
my throne you slipped off of up there!" And he also thought, "Oh, what
am I doing? She must be some rich kid, visiting the old man, she must
think I'm some hick dope."
Mary stood up, dripping and bedraggled, and made a deep bow.
"Permission to enter your kingdom, Sir Tom" she said formally.
And
Tom, despite himself, grinned again. "Lady Mary," he replied, making
his own deep bow, "welcome to my kingdom. Drop in any time, in fact,"
he began, but they both dissolved in laughter at that point and after
that there really wasn't any reason to worry. By the end of the
afternoon they had exchanged life stories as they dried out up on the
rock.
It was going to be a good summer.
