Mother leaned out of the car window, giving final instructions. “Now be careful! Drink plenty of water, and stop if you get overheated. I don’t want anyone getting sick.”

“We promise,” said the children all together.

“Stop worrying,” said Father. “They’ll be just fine.”

“Why don’t you come with us to town, Seal?” Mother reached out a hand to her youngest daughter, calling her by her baby name. “They won’t need you to help mow.”

Celia hesitated. Going to town with her parents usually meant stopping for ice cream cones. But she didn’t want to be left out of the magic.

Abner and Tate glanced at one another. Celia wouldn’t be much help. And the last time they had run into magic, she had caused some big problems.

“But we do need her,” Derek blurted out. Then he stopped in confusion. Why had he said that?

Celia beamed.

“All right,” said Mother, pulling her head back in the car. “Promise me that you won’t let Celia mow. She’s too little.”

“We promise,” everyone chorused again.

“You’re worrying about nothing,” Father told Mother as he put the car into gear. “They’ll quit before half an hour is up. Pushing a hand mower is a lot harder than they think.”

The children watched as the family car rolled down the long driveway, bumped over the stone arch bridge, and roared off down the gravel road. From the high hill, they could see all the way to the crossroads. That was where their mother usually remembered something she had forgotten.

They held their breath. But the car turned onto the main highway, its dark blue roof glinting in the sun.

Abner went into the shed and backed out, pulling the mower. “Okay, Celia, you stay out of the way.” The wheels thumped down onto the cement slab, and he turned to Derek. “Listen. It’s not hard. The mower does the work, but you have to hold on tight.”

“And mow in a straight line,” said Tate, “like Dad does. Don’t let it wiggle all over the place.”

Derek nodded. His chest felt tight and his breath came quickly. It was the way he always felt before throwing the first pitch in baseball, or kicking off in football, and it was a feeling he loved. “Okay, Mowey—let’s go!” He gripped the handle, stiffened his elbows, and pushed the mower off the cement.

For a moment, he thought it wasn’t going to work. Then all at once the handle shuddered, and the blades bit at the thick green grass. Derek yelped as the lawn mower surged ahead like a dog straining at the leash.

“Settle down now! Straighten it out,” he yelled, wrestling the mower out of its zigzag path.

There was a lot of grass, but the mower was more than up to it. After its long sleep in the toolshed, it almost pranced through the thick lawn. Its blades whirred with a quiet, satisfied sound, and grass spit out behind it like chopped salad. Derek felt proud, steering the headstrong machine across the yard. Behind him, he heard the others cheering.

He saw a tree ahead and leaned hard to one side to circle the trunk. The mower resisted at first. Once it got the idea, it seemed to like going round and round. Derek was dizzy before he figured out how to dig in his heels and swing the mower off at an angle.

It was almost as good as an amusement park ride. Better, thought Derek as he circled another tree, because at the end of it he would have earned enough money for a train ticket. He could hardly wait to see the guys.

The mower seemed to be speeding up. Maybe it was only now fully awake, or maybe some of the rust had chipped off. Either way it was going faster than he wanted to go. Round and round, back and forth, it kept right on mowing and it wouldn’t stop.

Derek’s arms felt tired from gripping the handle so tightly. His legs didn’t want to walk another step, much less run.

Where were the others? He could use a break. “Abner!” he tried to shout. “Tate!” But he was so out of breath that his voice was hardly more than a whisper.

Maybe they had gone to the house to get him some water. Derek hoped so with all his heart. It was hot out in the sun, and his baseball cap had fallen off.

In the kitchen, Abner, Tate, and Celia had decided to make lemonade. Their mother liked the real thing instead of the powdered kind, so she kept a bag of lemons on hand. The children were squeezing them and making a mess.

Celia spilled the sugar, and the mess got worse. Then she stirred too hard, and the lemonade splashed out and wet the sugar on the floor. When she tried to help clean up, she slipped and knocked over the wash bucket. Soapy water flooded everywhere.

Tate stood with her hands on her hips. Abner reached for a towel.

“I’m sorry,” said Celia. “I was just trying to help.”

Tate picked up a sponge. “You’ll help us more if you stay out of the kitchen.”

Celia sat in the front hall and watched through the window as Derek went past with the mower.

Why had Derek said they needed her? They weren’t going to let her mow. And now that she had spilled the sugar, they wouldn’t even let her help make lemonade.

Celia held a sticky Mr. Bunny close as she watched Derek come around again. He was walking quickly. In fact, he was trotting. As he passed, he seemed to be yelling something.

Celia thought for a minute. Then she went back to the kitchen. “Derek’s mowing fast,” she told her brother and sister.

Abner was on his knees, wiping the floor with a dish towel. “He’s got to mow fast if he wants to get it all done.”

“No,” said Celia, “I mean really fast. I think he needs help.”

Tate pushed the hair out of her flushed face. “He probably just needs someone else to take a turn. I’ll go, Abner.”

Tate stepped out the door, but Derek whipped by before she could do anything.

“I told you,” said Celia as a long, drawn-out “Taaaaaaate!” drifted back from behind their brother.

“Wow,” said Tate.

“Get ready,” said Celia. She stood at the corner of the house. “Here he comes again.”

Tate got into a half-crouch and held her arms out. The whirring sound of the mower got louder. As Derek went by, she grabbed the handle and took off with a jerk.

Derek let go with a groan of relief. He fell down flat on the cut grass.

Celia bent over him. “Do you want some lemonade? There’s some in the house.”

Derek nodded weakly. He felt as if he had played too long without a substitute.

The door slammed behind Celia, and Derek sat up. He had mown an amazing amount in a short time. The top of the hill was shorn, and the long grass around trees and outbuildings was neatly trimmed. Down below, the lawn was still shaggy, but the mower did not seem to be getting tired. In fact, the more it mowed, the faster it seemed to go.

When would it quit? Derek wondered. Maybe they could try to stop it by running it into the shed again. But the mower would keep right on bashing until they dusted off the grass. The last time, Mowey had almost banged a hole in the wall before they got it to stop. If the shed had to be fixed, that would cost money, too. Would it cost as much as a train ticket?

Derek found the strength to stand up and totter into the house. He gulped down two glasses of tart lemonade. When he stopped at last, he told Abner and Celia what he had been thinking.

At the sink, Abner wrung out a sponge. “I wonder why the magic settled in the mower? The mower wasn’t underground, in a burrow.”

The others nodded, remembering. The last time magic had happened to them, they had found out that it seeped up from deep in the earth. It came from somewhere under the hill on which their house stood. But they had thought the magic only affected small animals living in burrows.

Mowey had not been in the ground, soaking up magic. It had lived aboveground, for years, in a shed.

“Maybe the shed is like a burrow,” said Celia. “It’s dark and sort of closed-in.”

“I suppose the magic could come up through the floor of the shed,” said Abner, remembering the holes in the floorboards. “And maybe it got into the mower? I don’t know. Magic is hard to figure out.” He shrugged.

Suddenly Abner’s eye was caught by some sort of motion. He dropped the sponge and went to the window. All he saw was the flutter of Tate’s long brown hair, and then it was gone.

They hurried outside. Tate, hanging on grimly, was running after the mower with great long strides, like a gazelle.

“I’d better take a turn,” muttered Abner, worried. He was the biggest, and if he couldn’t control it, what could they do? “Maybe we should put it in the shed for a while.”

But the mower did not seem to like this idea. It gave a sudden twist and hopped to the side just as Abner reached for it. Mowey took off again, faster than ever.

“We’ll block for you,” said Derek. “Celia, get on the other side. Get ready.… Get set.… Hut one! Hut two!”

The mower tried to scoot around Abner, but Derek chased it back. It tried to jump to the other side, but Celia was there, waving Mr. Bunny. And then it was too late for the mower to escape, because Abner grasped the handle.

It nearly slipped from his fingers, but he hung on somehow, leaping over Tate as she collapsed. At once he was off and mowing, his long legs taking the lawn mower’s speed in stride.

The others carried the pitcher of lemonade down to the shed and sat on the cement slab. They watched as Abner went round and round. Each time his legs seemed to be moving faster than before.

“It’s a good thing we never let you try it, Celia,” Tate said. She took a swallow from her glass.

“I barely made it.” Derek wiggled his toes in the grass. “My legs were starting to cramp.”

“He’s coming back to the shed,” said Celia suddenly. She jumped up to open the door.

But the mower was in no mood to go in the shed. It curved away just as soon as it was in sight of the cement slab, and gave a rusty little chortle.

“Grab on!” cried Abner. “Help me slow it down!”

Tate waited for her chance. And when Abner came around again, she ran with him, matching his steps—or nearly—until she could reach out and take hold of his belt. She hung on with two hands and tried to use her weight to slow Abner down. The mower just threw itself more seriously into its work.

“We need one more!” cried Tate as they came around again.

Derek leaped up, knocking over his glass of lemonade. He took a running jump and hooked his fingers into the top of Tate’s jeans.

Celia watched. The mower was not slowing down. They would need her, too.

She took Mr. Bunny’s blue satin ribbon and knotted one end tightly around his arm. Then she tied the other end around her belt loop. When her sister and brothers called, she would have both hands free.

“Ceeeeeeliaaaaa!” came the cry.

Celia crouched. She was ready.

“Get out of the waaaaaay!”

The mower was going so fast, the children’s feet were a blur. It hit a bump, leaped into the air, and shook off the children like a tree tossing off apples in a high wind.

Abner, Tate, and Derek tumbled to the grass, thump thump thump. And the mower, with a scraping snort, bounced once on its rubber tires and disappeared over the hilltop.