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Lillian Ch. 2

Chapter Two

I have already mentioned that Lillian sometimes heard "whispers" from the wood - that at times it seemed to be calling to her, putting out vines and roots and wrapping tendrils around her heart. There had even been times when the voices were so clear they tickled her ears.

This was different.

For the first time in her life, Lillian heard a voice from the wood that could not be her imagination - a call which anyone else surely would have heard, had anyone else been there to hear it.

Someone was calling her name: "Lillian - Lillian."

She sprang up from the doorstep and stared at the wood with renewed interest. Had she been imagining things?

No. The voice sounded again, louder this time. "Lillian!"

Lillian stepped closer, until she stood at the edge of the lavender bed and was peering out over the stretch of grass. "Who's there?" she called. Her heart was pattering against her ribs - thump-thud, thump-thud, thump-thud.

"Lillian! Come here! Come here!" The voice sounded friendly, laughing even.

"Who are you?"

"A friend! Don't be afraid! Come on, Lillian!"

In all the world there is no sound arresting as that of one's own name. Other sounds can be ignored, but not that. And coming from the wood which had always held a strange and inexplicable fascination for Lillian...

Is it any wonder she stood and took a step forward, towards the lichen-covered trees and the tall sword-edged grass? Is it any wonder she forgot or perhaps even disregarded long years of warnings and forbiddings?

Forgive Lillian if she did wrong! I like to think you or I would have withstood the temptation - but would we really?

Once she had passed into the quavering shade of the trees, a deep and horrible quiet - a menacing calm - came over her. Perhaps she had walked into it. The rustling of the grass and leaves, the dancing of the dappled sunlight and shadow, the lichen growing on the rough wild cherry bark, all seemed to welcome and rebuke at once - like a mother who is glad to see her child but knows he must not play truant. "Go back, go back," said the whispers, even as they smiled and nodded and stretched out their arms to her - not the physical whispers, but the old familiar inaudible ones.

Lillian obeyed. She meant to obey. She turned and took a step back towards the mouse hole.

But it was too late.

A little tinkling laugh, merry but sinister, rang from the tangle of greenery. At once a dozen imperfect echoes answered it. Lillian froze.

"Well! The little mousey-mouse has entered the wood. Hello, Mousey-Mouse!"

"Who's there?" called Lillian, taking a step backwards. She tripped over a twig and fell to a sitting position.

The ragged bell-like laughter sounded again, from an uncanny number of sources; and a light wiry figure leapt down from a tree branch, followed by another over there, and another over here. Dark, heavy little silhouettes dropped from tree and bush like water droplets after a rainstorm.

"It's only us," said a voice; and Lillian found herself looking into a face. Could she have but known it, it was a face more like hers than any other she had yet seen. But oh, what a face! It gave her the shudders - not because it was ugly in itself (it was actually rather handsome), but because of a certain glint in the eye and a certain sneer about the lip. Dark eyes, dark hair, cunning smile, narrow forehead, pointed chin - all gave Lillian a prickly uncomfortable feeling. It was a boy's face; yet there was something almost feminine in it.

"We thought you would never pluck up the courage to come in!" he said. "Haven't you heard us calling to you?"

"Was that you calling to me?" asked Lillian, with a sensation of horror. To think it had been these creatures calling to her all her life!

"Oh, yes," said the boy. "And you ought to have listened long ago. We could have had a jolly time."

Instinctively, Lillian took a step back; but there were other boyish imps all around her, and even if she could get away from this particular one she would soon have to face another. She opened her mouth to say something; but all that came out was, "Oh - oh."

"Well! There's nothing to be done about lost time. Come!" said the boy, and took one leap towards her. He leapt like a frog, with all his arms and legs sprawled out gracelessly. This horrified Lillian. Lost time? Whatever on earth was he talking about? Come? Come where?

"I don't know what you mean," she stammered. "I - I think I ought to go home..."

"Oh, no you don't!" cried the boy. "Go back? Go back to that dingy little mouse hole? You've been there for long enough! Come along. Come along with us."

And before she could think to run away or struggle or even scream, he had her by the elbow and was dragging her along through the grass. His grip was gentle enough; but it was firm, and try as she might she could not twist away.

"Come - come where?" she asked breathlessly.

"With us. To Turvy Hill."

As they pulled the bewildered Lillian along, they began to sing. The song fit their wild, jocular characters perfectly - it dipped and swung like the flight of a swallow and whirled like falling leaves in an autumn wind. Lillian caught snatches of the words now and then, but she was too panicked and frightened to give them her full attention. I, however, happen to have access to all the songs of the Turvies, including this one. Here it is in full:

Oh, here we go to Turvy Hill

Where everything is willy-nill,

Where we can be jolly and wild and free

Exactly as we like to be!

Oh! hey! for the Turvy way,

For the Turvy way oh hey!

They sang this over and over again, until the tune spun in Lillian's head and the words "Turvy" and "willy-nill" seemed floating on the air -

"Here we are," cried the leader of the Turvies, and the song snapped off.

They had come to the top of a smallish hill upon which grew no forest or brush, but only three towering cedars. These massive towers of wood and needle, though few in number, provided enough shade to throw a forest gloom over the hill; their great evergreen heads seemed to lean towards each other and touch far, far over Lillian's head. In the center of these three trees stood one rotting stump, so enormous that had it still been a tree and not a stump it would have dwarfed the three cedars. In the bare, dusty ground surrounding the cedars and the stump grew dozens upon dozens of toadstools.

Lillian stared at all this with a mixture of sheer wonder and tentative fear - and a smidgeon of delight as well. Even in her uncertain situation, beauty struck her eye with surprising pleasantness.

"You like it, Mousey-Mouse?" asked the boy, stepping out in front of her.

Lillian looked him up and down. She could have liked his grin and his easy air if it hadn't been for that grain of something unsavory in it. What was that something? No matter what it was; it was there.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I am the Prince of the Turvies," said the boy. "The Turvy Prince. His Most Mischievous Highness." He gave a mock bow, and looked at her with insolently twinkling eyes. "You may call me whatever strikes your fancy."

"Acorn-top!" called one of the Turvies. "Call him Acorn-top!"

There was a burst of almost raucous giggles. The Turvy Prince turned to the laughers with a genial yet somehow threatening grin.

"Except," he said, "for Acorn-top. That is an insult I will not tolerate."

"Yah!" jeered one of the Turvies, jumping from side to side like a waggish cricket. "You've broken the one law! At him, boys - at Prince Acorn-top!"

What happened next Lillian never quite understood. There was a lot of jumping, and yelling, and laughing, and the name "Acorn-top" was thrown around a good deal; and everyone seemed to be leaping at the Turvy Prince, pulling his hair or tackling his ankle. If it hadn't been for an air of heedless good-will, Lillian should have been frightened.

"Enough! Enough!" cried someone at last; and everyone let the Turvy Prince alone, and stood up, and grinned; and everyone had a dirty face, and torn clothes, and ruffled hair.

"Now!" cried Prince Acorn-top (Lillian found she couldn't help thinking of him by this name), "let's all go in and have a nice revel. You've done punishing me?"

Some laughed; some shouted assent.

"Good. You're a lot of acorn-tops yourselves." He offered Lillian his arm. "Come, Mousey-Mouse."

Bewildered and too frightened to resist, Lillian took the Turvy's arm, and he led her up a little stone path right to the very bark of the tree stump. It was even older and larger up close, covered in lichen and tiny toadstools - and it had a door in it.

The Prince opened this door - it was a tiny, quaint, oddly-shaped wooden door - and gave a flourishing little bow. "Enter, Mousey-Mouse," he said. "For this one day you will be our princess - the princess of the Turvies!"

Shaken and scared, Lillian stood for a moment in indecision. The Turvies crowded the path behind her; to turn around and run would be to run into their grabbing hands and grinning faces. The thought of trying to escape frightened Lillian more than the idea of capture. After all, she thought, if she went along with it, it wouldn't feel like capture at all.

And so she did what she thought safest: she bit her lip and slipped through the doorway.

Oh, what a room she found herself in!

If you have never been inside a tree stump, then you cannot quite understand; but, if you have a good imagination, put it to work here and try to understand anyway. This tree stump was quite hollow on the inside, although it still had a top - that is, a ceiling and a roof. The walls were jagged and moist, piles of old black wood, and the ceiling was just these walls arching up to meet at odd, obtuse angles. The "room," as a result was roughly cone-shaped. It was a stump rotting from the inside out. And it was huge - absolutely huge, for creatures of mouse and Turvy and Lillian size.

It would have been dark as the inside of a spider's hole in there, except for the torches. Oh, were there torches! Dozens and dozens of them, the size of human matches or tiny birthday candles, stuck out of the rotting walls and hung in chandeliers from the jagged ceiling. Some of the smoke escaped through holes drilled in the stump, but for the most part there was a very thick cedar-scented haze in the air.

The light cast its yellow dancing glow on the walls and showed the ragged lumps of wood, streaked black and brown; it threw a buttery light on a long table stretching in odd snakey curves around the room.

Lillian stood and gaped at it for awhile.

"Do you like it, Mousey-Mouse?" asked the Turvy Prince, who stood at her elbow.

Lillian nodded. (When you are in the hands of the Turvies, you do not think of disliking the things they seem proud of.)

"Good," said the Acorn-Top; and, raising his voice, he announced, "It's time to eat!"

Time to eat? thought Lillian, as all the Turvies cheered and swarmed to the table. But it's hours until lunch time, and too late for breakfast! For in the mouse hole Lillian had grown used to very strict and regular meal-times - breakfast at eight, lunch at one, and supper at six thirty. But when she found herself seated beside the Turvy Prince at what seemed a place of honor, she forgot she wasn't hungry. She'd never had such a meal before - fresh and clean and raw, as though pulled straight from the heart of the wood. The Turvies ate nuts and blackberries and mushrooms with the earth still clinging to their stalks; they drank clear cold water fresh from a woodland spring.

"We eat the fare of the forest-kings," said the Turvy Prince. "We are the forest-kings. Every one of us, all of us. I am the prince of the kings."

His words puzzled Lillian. She decided he was talking nonsense.

"Do you like our forest-fare, Mousey-Mouse?"

Lillian nodded. It was true; she did like the forest-fare.

"Do you like our hall, Mousey-Mouse?"

Lillian nodded.

"Do you like us?"

Lillian did not like them. She shuffled her feet uncomfortably.

"Do you like us, Mousey-Mouse?" repeated the Turvy Prince.

"Why are you calling me 'Mousey-Mouse'?" cried Lillian, fed up at last with the teasing name. "I'm not Mousey-Mouse - I'm Lillian!"

"But you are a mouse," said the Turvy Prince, with a curious glimmer in his eye. "Aren't you?"

"Yes," said Lillian. "What else could I be?"

A round of laughter met this declaration - loud laughter, boisterous laughter, decidedly unpleasant laughter. The entire hall was filled with Turvy guffaws and shrieks and roars - not of merriment, but of deriding amusement.

"Did you hear that, boys?" cried the Turvy Prince, when the laughter had at last died down enough for his shout to be heard.

"YES!" yelled all the Turvies.

Prince Acorn-top lifted his goblet of blackberry juice. "This calls for a toast. We've done it, boys! To the Turvy way!"

"To the Turvy way!" called the Turvies, and drank.

"To all things upside-down and inside-out; to things which think they are but aren't; to things which think they aren't but are!"

They drank again.

"And to Mousey-Mouse," said Prince Acorn-top, with a strange little grin at Lillian. "Our thanks to you, Mousey." At this point, Lillian felt it had gone too far. She was confused and flustered and insulted.

She stood up, making her little wooden chair rattle. "My name isn't Mousey," she said. "It's Lillian. And I don't know what you all are talking about, or what makes you so rude, or why you've brought me here - but I'm fed up with it all, and I'm leaving."

Without another thought, she ran down the hall and out the door.


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