MARTHA AND IVY STARTED the sixth grade together, and during that fall the games at Bent Oaks Grove and the history of the Tree People continued to grow. As time went by, both Martha and Ivy began to specialize in certain roles. Ivy especially liked to be the Princess Wisteria because the role required a lot of dancing; and Martha, to her own surprise, became an expert at being the wicked Queen Oleander. When she thought about it, it occurred to her that she liked being the wicked queen because the part gave her a chance to do all the shrieking and howling and ordering people around that she’d never dared to do in real life. But whatever the reasons, there were times when she amazed herself, and Ivy too, with a performance of really inspired wickedness.
As Queen Oleander became more powerful, she began to find ways to conquer one source of magical protection after another, and it became necessary for the other side to be always on the lookout for new magic charms or amulets. One search started after the Crystal Globe gave a timely warning of danger to come. When Ivy consulted the Globe, which had once been a large doorknob, it revealed that a new and particularly fiendish attack on the Earthlings and the Royal Family was about to take place. This time it was to be made by two million starving sharls. A sharl, Ivy explained, was a small spider-shaped animal with huge daggerish teeth. They usually lived like rats in the cave homes of the Lower Ones, but the wicked Queen Oleander had ordered a huge army of sharls to be trapped and starved into a terrible ferocity. And now she was preparing to release them through the Doorway into Bent Oaks Grove.
“What will we do, Earthling?” asked Martha who was being Princess Wisteria at the moment.
Ivy consulted the Globe again. “I’m not sure, Your Highness. The Crystal Globe has stopped talking. I think the wicked queen must be interfering with its magic. I see strange flashing lights and hear strange noises.”
“Let me see,” Martha said leaning over Ivy’s shoulder. “It sounds like what my dad’s electric razor does to the T.V.”
But Ivy shoved her away. “Wait,” she said. “I see something. It’s an eye. A Golden Eye.” Martha tried again to see, and Ivy said, “There. It’s gone again.”
“What is the Golden Eye?”
“I don’t know. We’ll just have to find out. The Globe has gone dark again. You can see for yourself.”
They both meditated for a while but with no results. Finally at the same moment they both looked at Josie who was sitting on the ground a few feet away.
“Josie,” Ivy said, “how can we chase away the sharls?”
But Josie was playing with a safety pin and a piece of orange peel and she wouldn’t pay any attention. She was making the safety pin talk to the orange peel.
“Josie,” Martha said. “What would you do if a sharl was climbing up that rock beside you right this minute?”
Josie made the safety pin say to the orange peel, “If you shut your eyes, a sharl can’t hurt you.”
“Did you hear what she said?” Martha asked Ivy.
“Umm,” Ivy said. “I think she means we have to find the Golden Eye and put it on the altar. Then when the sharls start coming, we all close our eyes—and then it happens.”
“What happens?”
“The terrible power of the Golden Eye.”
“But what is the Golden Eye?” Martha insisted.
“What is the Golden Eye?” Ivy asked Josie.
Josie put down the orange peel and put her finger on one eyelid. “Eye,” she said.
“The Golden Eye,” Martha said.
Josie sat very still with her finger still on her eye. Then she pointed off towards the southeast. “Way—way—over there,” she said. So although it was already rather late in the day for beginning an expedition, they started out. Josie was given the magic chopstick wand to hold in both her fat little hands like a divining rod. Then they headed her in the direction in which she had pointed, and gave her a slight push. Martha and Ivy walked one on each side and a half step behind.
The journey began in the direction of the freeway and the overhead pedestrian walkway that crossed it. Josie walked very fast for someone with such short legs—and very purposefully as if she knew exactly where she was going. When they got to the walkway, Josie stomped up the stairs, two steps for each stair, and down the other side again. Then, she pointed the wand back the other way and started to climb back up.
“What’s the matter?” Martha asked, thinking the wand had made a mistake. But Ivy only rolled her eyes and made an exasperated expression.
“She loves to climb over the walkway,” she whispered. She went to Josie and turned her back around. “No!” she said. “Don’t you remember? You are taking us to the Golden Eye.”
Josie stuck out her lip and pointed, arms length. “The Golden Eye just went back,” she said determinedly.
Martha giggled, and Ivy tried not to. “It did not,” she said firmly. “You ought not to be thinking about climbing stairs when you’re doing magic. Do you want me to let Martha carry the wand?”
Josie shook her head and turned around. The wand wiggled and pointed, and the expedition got back under way. They walked and walked further into the southern tip of the Rosewood Range than they had been before, until at last they came to a high iron fence.
It was an old fence, rusty and hung with dying vines, and beyond it lay what seemed to be the remains of a large garden. Through the fence, the dusty smell of dead plants and thirsty soil seemed to reach out and surround them.
Before long they were tiptoeing down a weed-choked dusty path that led upward under thinning trees. They wound their way up the hill until, coming out of the trees, they saw the charred and blackened ruin of a house. Staring at the dark and jagged silhouette, Martha felt her shoulders jerk in an involuntary shiver. She turned quickly to Ivy.
But Ivy was gone. Not really, but she might as well have been. She was standing perfectly still staring at the old house. There was a kind of blur about her, as if she had moved to a distance that had nothing to do with space.
“Ivy?” Martha said.
Ivy took a deep slow breath and turned to Martha smiling. “Let’s go there,” she said.
“Do you think we ought to?”
Ivy’s only answer was to take Josie’s hand and lead the way.
It had been a large and beautiful house, and it had burned a very long time before. The loose ashes had long since weathered away, and the fire’s handiwork could only be seen on the charred edges of the walls, which rose in places several feet above the ground. Grass grew where floors had once been and a deep weed-grown pit marked the site of a large basement.
Martha and Ivy walked slowly all around the ruin. Josie ran ahead of them chattering away as usual, but Ivy was strangely quiet. They stopped, at last, near where some wide stone steps led up to nothing and sat down on the dry grass. Beside them was the blackened stump of what must have been a very large tree. Finally Ivy said, “It’s too quiet. Have you noticed?”
“Too quiet?” Martha asked. She listened and the silence was solid, like a wall.
“We ought to be able to hear the freeway here, at least a little. It’s not that far away.”
It was then that Martha noticed how the shadows of the ruined walls reached in jagged black fingers almost to where they were sitting. It was getting very late. “It’s getting awfully late,” she said. “Maybe we ought to—”
“Shhh!” Ivy said. “I’m listening.”
Martha listened too, until she began to feel she couldn’t stand it a moment longer. Then she got up and began to wander around. At the edge of the dead garden she sat down on an old stone bench and looked back. Josie was running from place to place, stopping now and then to talk as if someone were standing right beside her—but that was something Josie often did. Ivy was still sitting very still, with her face turned toward the burned house.
Martha was beginning to feel a little desperate about getting away, when suddenly her foot, scuffling in the dirt in front of the bench, turned up something that had been lying buried in the soft dark soil. When she wiped it off, she found it was an amber-colored translucent stone, shaped in an almost perfect oval.
“Look! Look!” she screamed. “I’ve found the Golden Eye.”
A few minutes later as Martha and Ivy were boosting Josie back over the iron fence, Ivy said, “As soon as we get the sharls stopped, we’ve got to come back here.” She turned back up toward the house, invisible now behind the trees, and said it again. “We’re going to come back.”
And Martha admitted to herself that they probably would.