This morning, Jill and I woke up very early and saw beautiful weather outside our window. We decided to play outside instead of doing our homework, so we packed some snacks and ran off, leaving a little note for Mum in case she got worried about where we were.
We walked for ages, and at last, we arrived at the big, green hill that we’d been looking forward to climbing. We sat on the grass and ate our sandwiches with a lovely view before us, sparkling rivers, trees, and all fields of beautiful flowers under the bright blue sky. “Perhaps we should come back in the spring so we can play among the flowers,” said Jill. I thought it was a good idea, but I was impatient to start climbing. So I jumped up and started to run up the hill.
After a while, Jill rejoined me, and we pushed on together, chatting and having fun. We suddenly found ourselves at the top and sat down for a little while to enjoy the view. Then we turned round and began walking down the other side of the hill. We were walking slowly because we were tired after standing and climbing. We even thought of sitting down for a bit again, but suddenly Jill shouted out, “Look, Jack, there’s something shining over there!”
She started to run towards it, and, of course, I ran after her. When we got to where the shining thing was, we found that it was half buried in the ground. What it was was very difficult to tell at first.
It looked grayish and brownish and greenish in patches, all mixed as if someone had put different tiles of varied colors together. There were stars and circles and letters and numbers all mixed up. “What a funny thing! I do wonder what it can be,” I said. “It looks like a puzzle,” said Jill. “Let’s take it home and ask Mum what she thinks it is.” “Yes, let’s,” I answered, and together we dug it from the ground and carried it home.
But neither Mum nor Dad seemed to know what it was. The map-like puzzle stayed on our kitchen table for some days, and everybody who came to the house inquired about it and said it was most uncommon, but no one seemed able to tell us what to do with it, or how to find out what it was, until at last one day a lady came to see Mum, and she as soon as she saw it said, “Oh! this is the very thing I have long looked for. Where in the world did you find it?”
Then we began to question her, and at last it appeared that she was a puzzle-maker, and she told us that this was part of a huge puzzle, which took a very long time to finish when it was made, and it was perhaps the only one then in the world. She said that if we would allow her, she would finish putting it together, and then come back and tell us all about it.
We were very pleased with this idea, so she took it away with her. Some days later she returned with it, and told us that it was a map of a place called Mystery Land, half to be found at one time and half at another. She told us we could keep it or throw it away, but that Mystery Land was very interesting. She said, too, it was an adventurous place, where there was treasure to be found by those who would search long. We were a little bit frightened when we heard this, but, at last, we thought we might perhaps visit it.
So, as it was a long time before school began, and the days would now be fine, we sat down and drew out the two halves of the map. Then we looked at them both carefully, and decided on the way by which we should go.
Those letters and the different-colored paths and pictures all seemed quite easy to understand as long as we kept them before us; and by following the map we soon found ourselves at its centre. We were still not certain we should see the treasure because there was no “X” marked on it anywhere. And so put down our rucksacks under a tree and ate our lunch, and sat talking of what we must do if we were lucky.
“I think we should lend it to someone else,” said Jill, quite a good idea, I thought a little later on. But right in the middle of our conversation, just as if someone was trying to stop me from thinking about it, a thick fog came over the place, and we hardly knew where we were. Then, suddenly, there was a great blast as if somebody was blowing up a balloon all at once. There was a dreadful crash by our side, and we both got up unnerved and horrified. The fog soon cleared a little. There was a kind of light in the air, but still nothing was to be seen quite distinctly, and only by the chill wind blowing in our faces could we guess which way the mood was.
That crash hadn’t seemed to frighten us so much as to awake us as we sat against the roots of the tree lost in thought. We both found ourselves seeing quite clearly and at once that there was a little hole in the wall, which formed the foot of a strange door, curiously marked—one we both knew quite well, but couldn’t at that moment tell how we knew. I stooped down, and discovered there was just room for me to creep through.
Of course, I had very little time to think about that noise, or fog, or strange light. I just gave one look back at Jill, beckoned to her, and crept through the wall. “Help me through, Jack,” I heard her whisper as soon as I was inside.
Before we had time to think about any dangers to be met with, she came beside me, and the marks of the door disappeared like chalk marks washed away by rain. It was giving her time to think, I suppose, before coming completely within.
And when we got together again, all those strange marks were replaced by a little riddle at the top of the wall, and a very strange riddle it was.
“How many letters in the kettle?” “How many are in the kettle?” “Two.” “How many letters in the kettle?” “Four.” “Four shuffled about breakfast now in another yard.”
The riddle was by no means easy to understand, but some parts of it began to dazzle me, and it came out clearer and clearer until I discovered that under “kettle” some other word was hidden, and with the “two” extra letters put in that second word the other words would all at once appear.
After we had examined the riddle from the inside and the outside, Jill said, quite suddenly, “What is a drink we always take first when we get up from bed—“ and hardly finished her statement before we both discovered at the same moment, “So that’s it!” I am not going to tell the secret, for that would be giving too much help, but I can assure you it was very puzzling and strange, and would need great perseverance to put yards and yards of riddle-marks, both inside and outside, completely to rights.
Then I remembered the memory verse that Jill loved best to recite. “Two are better than one,” and I said that to her, and she gave me such a smile in return. “Yes! we can do what none of us could do alone.” Then we got to work joyfully, and we soon began to put together small reasons and small replies to most of the riddles shining over our heads. Sometimes we couldn’t make out just what they meant, and sometimes it seemed almost hopeless ever to find out, but we only said to each other, “Two are better than one,” and went on gleefully.
After a while, we began to notice that there were a great number of stars shining out of the depths above us, which we had hardly noticed at first; but we marked this out because they came to give us the time that we needed, and we wondered how many more stars would have to shine out before we betook us once more on the way.
But before we had time to do anything, we suddenly saw that we might perhaps have to do the journey over again on foot. Far in front of us there was such a snow-white snow, and it seemed as if we should be compelled to climb the mountain-tops once more to come to the other side, before we could again be on the happy road that led us home across the hill.
“Had we not better take the shortest route?” said Jill. But before we had decided, the drawings began to flash light another light, and they did something else besides that which we couldn’t understand. Suddenly all of them without a question disappeared deep down into the riddle. “It’s just as if someone was opening a door, making us go out and creep through,” I said. “It is a door opening into the next yard.”
“There may be unseen dangers, some mysterious blocks of stone where any add-on I do, no one can stop!” cried Jill, in terror; but somehow we got through quite safely to the other side.
But I would not advise anyone to follow our example of having two minds about a thing, and yet helping one another at the same time unless they were very good friends like we were. At first, we simply kept ourselves awake, going backward and forward again to find out those different-colored stars; but as soon as we had done that, we turned back to our map again.
And after that, every single leaf or flower we touched was really so so odd and wondrous unique beyond anything you could ever hear or think of. It would have taken far too long, I really believe, just to tell you the names of the trees.
We would not have come across vast number of swans, or jack-in-the-boxes, or white pudding-ponies, but we should have met with one and all those who had come from a far-off the dairy path, and the space where they were so scattered about very funny. But of all the things I saw, what was the best of all was, that it was hardly necessary for us to touch a single thing.
At the hour which we should have spent at school, if we had at one time kept to our right way, each flower or whatever it might have been all stood still, just looking at us, wildly confused, and we made our way both to the bottom to the top of one everything up. They tried to understand by putting their heads before us, holding them up often as high as their necks could possibly reach, but they seemed perplexed, confused, and senselessly absurd calm.
They succeeded much better, I think, on another occasion. It was just complete magic, the approaching of such a thing, on that side, to the play of our thoughts from various things above may consider the sudden and strange disappearance on the heights above us. I would have you to know, by the by, that beforehand I cried out, preparing them somewhat for anything else unusual, “We had better give Santa Claus notice,” for most of the inhabitants, I observed, were white of all.
Under the trees, either large black-pudding or legs like a big-sized drum, so bizarre so as few would be inclined to pass them without getting puzzled about them. While still half-way seated in the midst of the grass, which was almost bare of legs, hands, bodies or arms, in meadows they swayed delightfully cut, almost into quarters.
Yet curiously did that garden grow! I trembled sometimes lest it might get too long, on the other side. There where that uncanny watch-tower would rush down enormous balloons, made of nightingales, the beautiful roads where all four went down the well back again were instead of nights Bengals without police or regularity, falling ten at a time from the astraea ourselves that no one mind came near it, there too met next yard to each yard a little star, whose shine or puzzle-downfully ostentation just began to be found, that insanity dear myself dizzy and ready at times to drop down.
I must not forget to tell you that before we set off on our return journey, we did the riddle completely right, and another most curious thing was that the night our own I did not take a single ounce of weight from her, but simply exchanged riddle for word. At last, she turned into a ball of very hard grey iron, and said, among other remarks, “Good friends are scarce,” most of course from where we were.
So then we both put down our things while we were yet only dials, so that they might be some little protection against the bright sun in really so cold a place. But still there wasn’t quite warmth proper.
Slumbering was quite out of the question, although at times it seemed near at hand by the stillness, the whiteness, and the suspense of meanwhile growing nearer and nearer right towards everything that might be reaching us later on to be able to sleep.
Perhaps, too, that night for the first time I began to feel the want of a pair of slippers. Joint and seat would probably have borne the bottom part on their own joints, did they allow already of our heads resting on an oak, or some other hard stool where we very charmed to-day right nip a bream or fresh done-up salmon off some little roast above my left side. Yet Jill had not had entirely overlooked this source of comfort, and she had with her mother’s stitches asleep at it all that day.
There remained one possibility after all the others that put me out of all the dangers—when for the first time perhaps we would doubly be tempted to leave our rucksacks. This same possibility I told Jill about, and she seemed to be most agreeable about it.