boys had been very careful to say the burglars hadn’t got beyond the first floor of the house.
Now the boys bent over the desk. They’d left Omri’s bedside light on in case Matron had had to tend to one of the wounded Indians in the night. She herself now sat, upright but clearly dozing, at a small circular table (made of the screwtop of a Timotei shampoo bottle, a good shape because it had a rim she could get her knees under). On it lay a tiny clipboard that she had brought with her from St Thomas’s Hospital. She’d been making up her notes and temperature charts.
On either side of her on the floor of the longhouse stretched a double row of pallet beds. Each bed was occupied by a wounded Indian. Matron’s ministrations had been so efficient that all were resting peacefully. She had earned her little nap, though she would probably deny hotly, later, that she had nodded off while ‘on duty’.
Outside the longhouse, beside the burnt-out candle, a blanket was spread on the soil in Omri’s father’s seed-tray. Curled up asleep on the blanket were Little Bull and Twin Stars, his wife. Between them, in the crook of Twin Stars’ arm, lay their newborn baby, Tall Bear.
All these people, when they were standing up, were no more than seven centimetres tall.
It had all started over a year before, with an old tin medicine-cabinet Gillon had found, a key which fitted it, which had belonged to Omri’s great-grandmother, and the little plastic figure of an American Indian which Patrick had given Omri (second-hand) for his birthday.
On that fateful night, Omri had put the Indian into the small metal cupboard and locked it with the fancy key. There was no particular point to this, really. Thinking back later, Omri didn’t know why he’d done it. He’d had a thing at the time about secret cupboards, drawers, rooms; hiding-places, kept safe from prying eyes, where he could secrete his favourite things and be sure they’d stay exactly as he’d left them, undisturbed by rummaging brothers or anyone else.
But the Indian didn’t stay as he’d left it. Some combination of key and cupboard, plus the stuff the Indian was made of – plastic – had worked the wonder of bringing the little man to life.
At first, when this happened, Omri – once past the first shock of astonishment – had thought he was in for the fun-trip of all time. A little, live man of his very own to play with! But it hadn’t turned out like that.
The Indian, Little Bull, was no mere toy. Omri soon found out that he was a real person, somehow magicked into present-day London, England, from the America of nearly two hundred years ago. The son of a chief of the Iroquois tribe, a fighter, a hunter, with his own history and his own culture. His own beliefs and morals. His own brand of courage.
Little Bull regarded Omri as a magic being, a giant from the world of spirits, and was, at first, terrified of him. Omri could see he was afraid, but the Indian was incredibly brave and controlled and Omri soon began to admire him. He realized he couldn’t treat him just as a toy – he was a person to be respected, despite his tiny size and relative helplessness.
And it soon turned out that he was by no means the easiest person in the world to get along with, or satisfy. He had demands, and he made them freely, assuming Omri to be all-powerful.
He demanded his own kind of food. A longhouse, such as the Iroquois used to sleep in. A horse, although previously he had never ridden. Weapons, and animals to hunt, and a fire to cook on and dance around. Eventually he even demanded that Omri provide him with a wife!
In addition, Omri had to hide him and protect him. It needed only a little imagination to realize what would happen if any grown-up should find out about the cupboard, the key and their magic properties. Because Omri soon found out that not just Little Bull but any plastic figure or object would become alive or real by being locked in the cupboard.
But he couldn’t keep the secret entirely to himself. His best friend, Patrick, eventually found out about it, and lost no time in putting his own little plastic man into the cupboard. And so ‘Boo-Hoo’ Boone, the crying Texas cowboy, had come into their lives, complicating things still more. For of course, cowboy and Indian were enemies, and had to be kept apart until a number of adventures, and their common plight – being tiny in a giants’ world – brought them together and made them friends and even blood-brothers.
Omri bought the plastic figure of an Indian girl and brought her to life as a wife for Little Bull. And shortly after that, it was decided – with deep reluctance by the boys – that having three little people, and their horses, around amid all the dangers that threatened them in the boys’ time and world, was more than they could cope with. It was just too much responsibility. So they ‘sent them back’, for the cupboard and key worked also in reverse, transforming real miniature people back into plastic and returning them to their own time.
Omri hadn’t intended ever to play with this dangerous magic again. It had been too frightening, too full of problems – and too hurtful, at the end, when he had to part with friends he had grown so fond of. But as with so many resolutions, this one got broken.
About a year later, by which time Omri’s and Patrick’s families had both moved house, Omri won first prize in an important competition for a short story. The story he wrote was called The Plastic Indian and was all about – well, it was the truth, but of course no one thought of that; they just thought Omri had made up the most marvellous tale. And he was so excited (the prize was three hundred pounds, he was to receive it at a big party in a London hotel, and even his brothers were very impressed) that he decided to bring Little Bull back to life, just long enough to share this triumph with him since he had been such a vital part of it.
Unfortunately, things were not so simple.
When Omri put Little Bull, Twin Stars and their pony – the plastic figures of them – back in the cupboard, they emerged much changed.
Little Bull lay across the back of his pony with two musket-balls in his back, very near to death. There had been a battle in his village, between his tribe and their enemies, the Algonquins, together with French soldiers. (Omri had already learnt that the French and English had been fighting in America at the time, and Little Bull’s tribe was on the English side.) Little Bull had been wounded. Twin Stars, although on the point of having a baby, had rushed out and heaved Little Bull on to his pony, just as the magic worked, bringing them – tiny as before, but as real as ever, and in desperate trouble – to Omri’s attic bedroom.
And thus it was that Omri was launched into a whole series of new and even more hair-raising and challenging adventures.
Luckily Patrick was nearby and was able to help with some excellent ideas. Boone ‘came back’ too, and they also brought to life a hospital Matron from a much more recent era to help save Little Bull’s life. Later when he demanded to go back to his village, a British Royal Marine corporal, Willy Fickits, and a contingent of Iroquois braves, were brought to life to help take revenge on the Algonquins.
At this point there was a most incredible turn of events.
Boone, the cowboy, suggested that the boys ‘go back’ to Little Bull’s time and witness the battle. Of course they thought it was impossible. How could they fit into the little bathroom cupboard, only about thirty centimetres high? But Boone pointed out that the magic key might fit something larger – the old seaman’s chest that Omri had bought in the market, for instance.
It worked. Each boy climbed in in turn, the other one turned the key, and each separately went back in time to the Iroquois village.
When