The Dragon Tree Read online

  JANE LANGTON

  The Hall Family Chronicles

  For Nathan, James and Paul

  Mythology is … the great dragon-tree

  of the Western Isles, as old as mankind.

  —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

  CONTENTS

  1. NO PRINCE EITHER

  2. THE STUCK-UP GIRL

  3. THE RABBLE

  4. LEFTOVER MAGIC

  5. THE SWELLING IN THE GROUND

  6. THE LEAFY STICK

  7. BEING NICE

  8. THE TERRIBLE TEA PARTY

  9. THE TREE FROM FAIRYLAND

  10. IT’S OUR TREE

  11. THE DANGEROUS WEED

  12. THE DECLARATION OF WAR

  13. HALF AND HALF

  14. MY HALF!

  15. THE SAINTS OF OLD

  16. THE LURKING OF MORTIMER MOON

  17. THE VIGIL

  18. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE NOBLE TREE

  19. THE NOBLE KNIGHTS

  20. UGLINESS NOW

  21. THE MATCHBOOK

  22. THE FLOWERING TREE

  23. SIDNEY’S FATHER’S SUSPENDERS

  24. MORE ROPE

  25. THE INVISIBLE KNIGHT

  26. IT’S ME, THE MOSS!

  27. THE GOOD SNAKE

  28. HUMPTY DUMPTY

  29. THE DRAGON TREE

  30. UGGA-UGGA

  31. THE FIRST NOTE

  32. THE SECOND NOTE

  33. THE WILD WIND

  34. ESCAPE!

  35. THE WRONG PRINCESS

  36. THE APPLE BARREL

  37. POOR LITTLE MORTIMER

  38. WICKEDNESS OVERLOAD

  39. THE GRAND OLD TREE

  THE HALL FAMILY CHRONICLES

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  NO PRINCE EITHER

  “CONGRATULATIONS, DEAR Mortimer and Margery!”

  Annabelle Broom, the real estate lady, had come to welcome Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Moon to their new Concord home. As the moving van drove away from No. 38 Walden Street, the proud owners stood smiling on their very own front porch.

  “Why, thank you, Annabelle!” said Mrs. Moon, beaming at her over an armful of teddy bears.

  “Oh, don’t thank me,” said Annabelle, shaking her head. “I’ve also come to warn you about the neighbors.”

  “The neighbors?” Mrs. Moon glanced nervously at the house next door, where a lanky redheaded boy was loping up the walk.

  Her husband frowned. “What’s the matter with the neighbors?”

  “Oh, they’re all right, really,” said Annabelle. “In fact Mr. Hall is supposed to be this big important professor.” She rolled her eyes comically. “But as for the children!” She moved closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Dear people, I must warn you, because I see you have a teenage daughter.”

  “You don’t mean Emerald?” Margery Moon laughed merrily. “She’s not our daughter. She’s my husband’s second cousin, three times removed.”

  “The poor child was an orphan, you see,” explained Mortimer Moon. “So we took her in.”

  “How generous of you!” said Annabelle.

  “And not only that.” Margery cuddled her teddy bears. “We gave her a job as our maid-of-all-work.”

  “How kind of you!” said Annabelle as the screen door opened and a pale girl stepped out on the porch.

  “Oh, Emerald,” said Mrs. Moon, “I want you to be extremely careful unloading the car. My crystal goblets are extremely fragile.”

  The girl said, “Okay, Mrs. Moon,” and hurried down the steps.

  Annabelle watched with narrowed eyes, noting the way the girl’s yellow hair floated out behind her. “Well, just the same, a word of warning. You see, there are three children in the house next door.”

  Mortimer Moon raised his eyebrows. “Juvenile delinquents, you mean?”

  “Well, no, I wouldn’t say that. The girls are fairly harmless, I suppose, and anyway the older girl’s away in Paris, France. Georgie, the little one, is fairly harmless. But there is also a son named Edward.” Annabelle corrected herself. “Or perhaps he’s a nephew. Whatever.”

  “He’s the delinquent?” Margery Moon turned her head and stared fearfully at the neighboring house, where the redheaded boy was lingering on the porch with his hands in his pockets.

  “Not delinquent exactly,” said Annabelle. “But he’s part of a gang, a whole crowd of kids. The rabble, I call them. As far as I know, Edward has never actually been in trouble with the police, but …”

  “But what?” said Margery and Mortimer together.

  “Just take care, that’s all. I urge you to keep an eye on your maid, Ruby.”

  “Emerald,” corrected Margery.

  “Of course. I knew it was some precious stone.” Then Annabelle spoke firmly. “If I were you, I’d forbid her to have anything to do with those people. Anything what-so-ever.”

  “Goodness me!” Margery stared keenly at her husband’s second cousin, three times removed, as she heaved a large box out of the trunk of the car.

  “And there’s something else about Number Forty Walden Street,” said Annabelle. “I suppose I should have warned you about it before.”

  “Warned us about what?” said Mortimer Moon, frowning.

  But then his wife screeched at the maid-of-all-work as she staggered up the walk with the box. “Be careful, Emerald!”

  Emerald nodded and struggled up the steps. But as she tottered across the porch, Mrs. Moon shook a warning finger and said, “Those goblets must be washed at once, do you hear me, Emerald?”

  Clutching the heavy box, Emerald turned the handle of the screen door with two fingers, bumped the door open with her knee, and kept it open by leaning against it. “Okay, Mrs. Moon,” she said, edging sideways into the house.

  “And don’t forget, Emerald,” exclaimed Mrs. Moon, raising her voice, “the shelves must be scrubbed first.”

  “Right.” Emerald gasped, feeling the box begin to slip and taking a firmer hold.

  Then Mr. Moon shouted through the screen door, “Oh, and Emerald, when you’re finished in the kitchen, please mow the backyard.”

  Emerald leaned against the kitchen counter, set down the box, and took a deep breath, remembering an old story about a ragged girl, a stepmother, a couple of stepsisters, a fairy godmother, and a prince.

  In her own case the stepsisters were missing and there was certainly no fairy godmother. And no prince either.

  Back on the front porch, Annabelle Broom said crisply, “Mr. and Mrs. Moon, do I have your full attention?”

  “Certainly,” said Mortimer Moon.

  “Because there’s something else you should know about the house next door.”

  “What?” said Margery and Mortimer together.

  “It’s jam-packed with something truly horrible.” Annabelle looked at her watch, squealed, “Sorry, gotta go,” and scuttled down the porch steps.

  “Wait a minute!” shrieked Margery Moon.

  “Jam-packed with what?” bellowed Mortimer Moon.

  Annabelle called something over her shoulder as she galloped to her car, but they didn’t hear. “What did you say?” screamed Margery.

  Leaping in behind the wheel, Annabelle slammed the car door, leaned out the car window, and shouted her warning again as she zoomed away. This time they heard it clearly: “Watch out for weirdness buildup.”

  2

  THE STUCK-UP GIRL

  AS SHE LUGGED the box of glassware into the house, Emerald heard the news about the scary boy, and then the warning about his dangerous house. Therefore, as she trundled the lawnmower out of the garage, she was careful not to glance at the alarming porches and threatening gables and bulging tower of the house next door.
r />   But the scary boy who lived in the house was not afraid to look at his new neighbor. While Emerald leaned forward to push the lawnmower through the thick grass, then heaved it backwards and swerved it around bushes and trees, Eddy Hall just happened to be feeding Aunt Alex’s chickens.

  Normally it was Georgie’s job, but today he had offered to help. “Well, okay,” said Georgie, handing him the pail.

  But Eddy wasn’t paying attention to the chickens. After tossing a handful of cracked corn over the fence, he turned to wave at the girl with yellow hair and shout, “Hi there!”

  But she only gave him a frightened glance, then turned her back and threw herself at the lawnmower, shoving it rapidly away and vanishing behind the far side of the house.

  “She’s stuck-up, I guess,” murmured Eddy, crestfallen.

  “She has green eyes,” whispered Georgie.

  3

  THE RABBLE

  ANNABELLE BROOM HAD CALLED them a rabble. But the family at No. 40 Walden Street was really just an ordinary mixture of human beings, chickens, and a cross-eyed cat—unless you also counted the statuary.

  Professor Frederick Hall was the head of the household. Part of the time Uncle Fred was a Concord selectman, but most of the time he sat at his desk writing a book about that great genius Henry Thoreau, who had lived down the road at Walden Pond a long time ago and written a masterpiece called Walden. Everybody expected Uncle Fred’s book to be another masterpiece—that is, if he could ever calm down enough to finish it.

  Professor Alexandra Hall. Aunt Alex was another fan of Henry Thoreau, but instead of springing joyfully out of her chair to quote magnificent passages, she kept them in her heart.

  Eleanor Hall was their niece. At the moment, Eleanor was studying abroad, but she wrote excited letters home: “Paris is just so incredibly awesome!” or “Paris really sucks!”

  Her brother, Edward Hall, wore a gold stud in one ear and his baggy pants hung from his hip bones, but, delinquent or not (probably not), he was a big man at high school. Eddy was cool, really cool, a noisy comedian who liked to talk about himself in the third person:

  “Gallantly our hero took out the garbage.”

  “With saintly benevolence our hero assisted his aged aunt.”

  “Modestly our hero bowed to the cheering crowd.”

  Georgie Hall was a sixth grader in the Alcott School. Georgie was a quiet and obedient little girl, but when she made up her mind about something important, there was no stopping her. Once she had walked all the way to Washington to talk to the President. She had begun her march all by herself, but by the time her great Children’s Crusade reached the White House, it was sixteen thousand strong. To Uncle Fred, Georgie was like a force of nature.

  Henry Thoreau had been dead for years, but in a way he too was a resident of No. 40 Walden Street. Uncle Freddy’s hero was only a bust on a tall stand in the front hall, but the gaze of his plaster eyes seemed to pierce the wall as though he could see all the way to Walden Pond, where long ago the real Henry had written his famous book.

  The other piece of statuary was a tall bronze woman on the newel post of the staircase, a majestic sort of light fixture. The word TRUTH was inscribed across her metal dress like a motto, as though she were saying, “Now hear this!”

  The rest of the rabble didn’t live at No. 40 Walden Street. They were a flock of noisy kids in the neighborhood: Eddy’s friends Oliver Winslow and Hugo Von Bismarck and Georgie’s classmates Frieda Caldwell, Cissie Updike, Otis Fisher, Sidney Bloom, and Rachel Adzarian. After school they milled around in each other’s houses and messed up their mothers’ kitchens and watched TV in each other’s living rooms and drove their parents crazy.

  And then there was the Oversoul. Well, it’s probably silly to call the Oversoul a member of the household, but Uncle Fred could feel it looming over the roof in a kindly cloud. No wonder he was so often carried away by fits of excitement. Not only did the Oversoul shower him with lofty thoughts from above, but the statuary in the front hall did the same thing, only sideways, as though reaching out to pluck his sleeve whenever he walked by.

  Last of all, there was the house itself. Was No. 40 Walden Street really infected with “weirdness buildup”? Or was it filled to overflowing with something else entirely?

  4

  LEFTOVER MAGIC

  YES, THERE WAS something else. It was leftover magic.

  Uncle Fred was too busy writing his great book to think about it much, but Aunt Alex was aware of it all the time.

  In the kitchen, for instance, she sometimes had to clap a lid over her pot of soup to keep sparkles from falling into it from the enchanted air. In the front hall the radiator sometimes rattled as if it were trying to tell her something, and Henry’s plaster lips often seemed to whisper, Listen, listen, and the lamp in the metal hand of the lady on the newel post glittered like a star. Even the laundry on the back porch—Eddy’s pants and Uncle Freddy’s shirts—sometimes danced as if they were alive.

  And as for the attic! Once in a while Aunt Alex climbed the attic stairs just to look around and remember, because so many wonders were packed away up there, such as Eddy’s mysterious bicycle and Georgie’s American flag and the snowflake wedding dress and the glowing rubber ball and the windows that once upon a time had flashed and twinkled like a diamond.

  All these marvels were out-of-date, stored away and forgotten. But the house itself did not forget, because it was still bewitched—not with a weird decay like mildew, but with something like a healthy flow of blood in the wiring or a rush of water singing in the pipes.

  The leftover magic was now so thick that it drenched the walls, made its way through the clapboards, and dripped down on Aunt Alex’s flower bed. Soon her trumpet lilies were hooting softly and her marigolds glimmered in the dark.

  Farther and farther spread the spell of the enchanted house, moving underground through dirt and rock, heading northward in the direction of the house next door.

  5

  THE SWELLING IN THE GROUND

  “EDDY, DEAR,” SAID Aunt Alex, “you mustn’t stare.”

  “Oh, right.” Eddy turned away from the window, but every now and then he couldn’t help taking another look at the neighboring house.

  The stuck-up green-eyed girl did not appear again, but Mr. Moon was everywhere at once.

  He was a hard worker, you could see that. Every time Eddy twitched a curtain aside he saw Mr. Moon hurrying briskly from one task to another, attacking his bushes with an electric hedge clipper. It made a fierce buzzing noise.

  He worked at the task all week. On Monday he turned a sprawling forsythia bush into a cube. On Tuesday an untidy hydrangea became a ball like a scoop of ice cream. On Wednesday he transformed a holly into a prickly pyramid. On Thursday there was an even more savage racket. Mr. Moon was using a chain saw on a tree in his backyard.

  Eddy had to bellow to be heard. “Hey, Uncle Fred, come look!”

  His uncle came to the window just in time to see an oak tree tip and crash to the ground. The house shook. In the kitchen the hanging teacups rattled, and in the front hall Henry’s plaster eyes widened in surprise.

  For a moment the racket stopped, but then the chattering roar began again as the vibrating teeth of Mr. Moon’s powerful saw bit into the rough bark of a maple tree.

  Eddy shook his uncle’s arm and shouted, “We’ve got to stop him!”

  But Uncle Fred only shook his head sadly. “We can’t interfere. You know the old saying, Eddy, A man’s house is his castle.”

  “His castle!” gasped Eddy. “But look at him now, Uncle Fred. He’s going after the pine tree. It must be against the law.”

  “No, Eddy, I’m afraid not.” Uncle Fred looked wretched. “He can do whatever he wants with his own property.”

  Eddy couldn’t believe it. As the screaming noise of the saw began again, he cried, “I’ll make him stop.” He plunged away from the window and threw open the back door.

  Uncle Fred called after
him sharply, “Eddy!”

  Eddy slowed down and looked back. “Well, okay, Uncle Fred. I won’t say a word. I’ll just watch.”

  And he did. Eddy stood watching all afternoon beside the chicken yard while the flustered hens squawked at the hideous noise, and the cross-eyed cat yowled and crawled under Eddy’s bed, and in the kitchen Uncle Fred and Aunt Alex winced and covered their ears.

  Watching the destruction, Eddy thought bitterly, Our hero’s sword is frozen in its scabbard. Leaning over the fence, he glowered at the man with the chain saw. Mr. Moon gave him a quick glance and went right on demolishing one tree after another.

  A birch tree sagged and sprawled. Eddy clenched his fists and kept his mouth shut, but when the saw began whining into a flowering dogwood tree, he shouted, “Stop!”

  Mr. Moon paid no attention. His saw went right on grinding through the slender trunk, and in a few seconds the dogwood drooped and fell, its blossoming branches thrashing the ground.

  It was horrible. As the chain saw ripped its way through the rest of Mr. Moon’s trees, Eddy tried to tell himself that this mass murder was perfectly legal by right of some document signed and sealed by the Great and General Court of Massachusetts.

  But it was like watching an execution. Mortimer Moon’s backyard had become a wilderness of stumps. When the last blossoming lilac lay on the ground, Mr. Moon walked firmly toward his back door, stepping high over the mangled limbs of his fallen trees. At the last minute he saluted Eddy with a cheerful wave.

  Sick at heart, Eddy stumbled away. He glanced at the windows of the house next door, wondering what Miss Stuck-up thought about the slaughter. But all the windows were dark. (It didn’t occur to Eddy that someone might be standing behind the curtains in the northwest bedroom on the second floor.)

  In the meantime—ouch—he tripped over a bump in the lawn and fell to his knees.

  Crawling closer, he looked at the little swelling in the grass. Before his eyes it was growing bigger. Something was pushing up from below.