The Diamond War Read online

  NOT LONG AFTER KATE and Aurora left the Pappases’ house, the door opened again and a small boy with a pointed nose, sharp eyes, and a huge mop of curly hair came out. It was Aurora’s eight-year-old brother, Ari. He looked around quickly, ran across the front yard, and climbed up into one of the big old cherry trees. When he was comfortably seated in the crotch of the tree he pulled his fanny pack around to the front, zipped it open, and took out a brand-new notebook. Opening the notebook to the first page, he carefully printed “THE BIG NEW GARCIA EXPOSé STORY by Aristotle U. Pappas.”

  Ari, who was in third grade, had been writing in cursive for quite a few months, but he always printed his titles in big dark letters so that they would look like the headlines in a newspaper.

  Ari was practicing to be a reporter. The kind of reporter who goes around investigating all sorts of interesting secrets about terribly important people and then writing “expose” articles about them. Someday the secret things he wrote about would be in newspapers and magazines and even books, and he would become rich and famous. He wouldn’t mind signing his books with his real name then. For a kid, having a name like Aristotle was a pain in the neck, but it would be just right for a famous investigative reporter.

  So far Ari hadn’t met any very important people so he practiced by writing about the people who lived where he did—in Castle Court. None of them were terribly important, but some of them came pretty close. Like the Garcias, for instance.

  From where he was sitting in the cherry tree in his front yard, Ari could see part of the Garcias’ house. It was a big house. The biggest one in the court. That was because the Garcias were pretty rich. A long time ago Mr. Garcia had been a famous baseball player and now he owned a sort of famous restaurant. So writing about the Garcias was pretty close to writing about famous people. Ari was still trying to decide which one of the almost famous Garcias to practice writing secret stuff about when the front door of the Garcias’ house opened and Susie came out. Susie Garcia came out of the big double front doors of her house and slammed them both behind her. Hard. Then she started across the circle. If Ari were more like his sister Aurora, he probably would have had a mysterious supernatural feeling that an important story was heading his way. Aurora had mysterious feelings all the time. But the only thing Ari felt at that moment was that Susie was angry. “Wow!” he whispered. “This time she’s really mad at somebody.” He sure hoped the somebody wasn’t him.

  Susie kept on coming, swinging her fists and glaring. She stomped around the planter island and headed directly toward Ari’s house. “Wow!” he said again. He couldn’t think of anything he’d done lately that might make anybody that angry. But with Susie you never knew. When she was right under his tree he took a chance and said, “Hey, Susie.”

  Susie jumped about a foot. Then she looked up and frowned harder than ever. She didn’t say anything. Even though Susie Garcia was in Ari’s class, third grade at Beaumont School, she never talked to him very much. In fact, at school Susie never talked to any boy if she could help it. At home Susie had nothing but big brothers, so at school she liked to talk to girls. Like Ari’s sister, Aurora, for instance. Susie particularly liked talking to Aurora. Susie went on not saying anything so Ari said, “You want to see Aurora?”

  “Yeah,” Susie said.

  Ari put his pencil behind his ear and his reporter’s notebook in his teeth. Then he swung down out of the tree. When he was on the ground he took the notebook out of his mouth and said, “Aurora isn’t home right now.”

  Susie glared at Ari. Then she stuck out her lower lip and blew a bunch of curly black bangs off her forehead. “Where is she?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Ari said. “She and Kate went off somewhere.”

  He really didn’t know. Not for sure. Actually, he had a pretty good idea, but he also knew what Aurora and Kate would do to him if he told. Particularly what Kate would do to him. Kate might not be quite as good at mysterious feelings as Aurora, but she was very good at karate. “What did you want to see her about?” Ari asked.

  “I’ve got something to tell her,” Susie said. “Something very important.”

  “Well,” Ari said. “She’ll probably be home in an hour or two. Could you tell her then?”

  Susie sighed angrily. “I don’t know. Maybe not. I might not be mad enough by then.”

  Ari felt his ears prick up. An experienced investigative reporter knew good story material when he heard it. But he didn’t take his pencil out from behind his ear and get ready to write. He knew that would be a mistake. Being too interested made people get suspicious and shut up. Instead he just said, “Oh yeah?” in a slightly bored tone of voice.

  Susie nodded. “Maybe I’ll decide not to rat on him after all.” Her eyes narrowed and she stuck out her jaw. “Maybe I’ll just go home and…and…stick a knife in his basketball—or something.”

  “Oh,” Ari said. “Carlos, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Susie said. “The creep! He ate up all the Dove bars. A whole box full. And they were mine. I bought them with my own birthday money.” She frowned at Ari. “How’d you know it was Carlos?”

  “Well, Rafe plays football mostly, and Gabe plays the guitar. Carlos is basketball, right?”

  Susie shrugged. “Yeah, basketball.” But then her eyes narrowed again. “That’s just it. That’s what I wanted to tell Aurora. Carlos and the rest of those creepy PROs are going to start playing baseball too.”

  Ari was puzzled. Carlos and his friends, Eddy and Bucky, played basketball all the time. They played in the summertime and in the winter. They even played before breakfast in the morning and after dark in the evening. Sometimes they played in their own driveways and backyards, but mostly they played on the old cement driveway at Dragoland. As far as Ari knew they never played baseball very much because there wasn’t enough room for a baseball game anywhere in Castle Court. But what Ari didn’t get was what any of that sports stuff had to do with Aurora. He took his pencil out from behind his ear and scratched his head with it. “Yeah?” he said.

  “Yeah,” Susie said. “And do you know where they’re going to put their baseball diamond?”

  Ari had no idea.

  “At Dragoland,” Susie said. “Back in the Weed-patch at the back of the lot. And first base is going to be right in the Unicorn’s Grove. They’re going to chop down the whole grove with Bucky’s hatchet.”

  “Wow!” Ari said. He was surprised—and excited. He was surprised because he didn’t know that Susie even knew about the Unicorn’s Grove. And he was excited because he had a feeling that he was on the trail of a very important story. He was planning his first sentence when he realized Susie was still there. And still asking questions about where to look for Aurora.

  “You might try the barn,” Ari said. “They’ve been there a lot lately.”

  Susie’s frown faded. When Susie wasn’t frowning she looked something like a baby rabbit. “What do they do at the barn?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s some kind of a ghost thing. They do this thing about the barn being haunted by the ghost of some mysterious Anderson ancestor.”

  “Yeah? Ghosts?” Susie’s dark eyes always seemed to shoot sparks when she was really interested.

  “I guess I’ll try the barn,” she said and took off running at top speed. Susie did a lot of things at top speed. Ari sighed. He felt a little guilty about sending Susie off to the Andersons’ barn on a wild-goose chase. And it would be a wild-goose chase because he’d investigated enough that morning to be pretty sure that Kate and Aurora were doing the unicorn thing again today. And that was always at one special place.

  Ari tucked his pencil and notebook back into his fanny pack and started up the sidewalk. It didn’t take long. Just past the Grants’ overcrowded flower beds and the Wongs’ neat boxy gardens you came to a tangled jungle of trees and bushes, and there you were. In the vacant lot that everyone called Dragoland. Actually the best thing about the vacant lot was that it wasn’t really vaca
nt. A long time ago, when the Anderson family’s Castle Farm was just being turned into Castle Court, some people named Dragoman bought lot number five. Then after they’d started to build a very large house they suddenly stopped and went away. They went away leaving a brick foundation around a half-dug basement, an extra-wide cement driveway, an empty fishpond, and a jungle of trees and bushes. At the back of the lot was the big flat weed-grown field known as the Weedpatch.

  Nobody knew for sure why the Dragomans went away. There were a lot of rumors. But nobody wanted them to come back. At least none of the kids did.

  Everybody played in the vacant lot called Dragoland. Over the years nearly every Castle Court kid had dug clubhouses in the basement, which was known as the Pit. Almost every year there was a new tree house in one of the big old oak trees. Little girls played house or hopscotch in the dry fishpond. The Weedpatch was a great place for small games of soccer or touch football, and the whole place was perfect for hide-and-seek. And, of course, Carlos and the other PROs practically lived on the old cement driveway, which had been made into a basketball court.

  And—way at the back of the lot, between the Weedpatch and the creek bed, there was a thicket of bamboo and young acacia trees that was called the Unicorn’s Grove. At least that was what it was called by Kate Nicely and Aurora Pappas and a few of their closest friends. Not to mention a certain investigative reporter who knew about a handy spying place in a clump of bamboo at the far edge of the grove.

  When Ari reached Dragoland he took the quickest route to the back of the lot, a narrow path that twisted through the jungly vines and bushes, dropped down into the Pit, crossed it, and went up the other side.

  Once out onto the Weedpatch he walked quickly and quietly, heading toward the creek bed and a thicket of small trees and bamboo. When he got near the thicket he started to tiptoe.

  He was still tiptoeing, going around the trees toward the creek, when he began to hear the music. He grinned. They were there, all right. He stopped, and for a moment he thought of going right on in. He would burst right into the center of the grove and quickly tell them why he’d come. Quickly—before Kate had time to start getting violent—he would tell them exactly what Susie had said and what the PROs were planning to do to the Unicorn’s Grove.

  But then he chickened out. To burst right in, even if he talked very fast, would be just too dangerous because of Kate’s karate training. He could talk pretty fast when he had to, but a karate chop was probably even faster. So he went into the grove by his usual route after all, at the back where the bamboo was so thick that only a weasel—or a very skinny eight-year-old reporter—could wiggle through. Could wiggle into the grove on his stomach as he had many times before. Closer and closer, until he could hear everything, and see most of what was going on in the clearing. Resting his chin on his hands he settled down to wait for just the right moment to jump out into the clearing and—very quickly—tell them that he’d come to warn them about a terrible danger to their own private and personal Grove of the Unicorn.

  Chapter 5

  WHILE CARLOS GARCIA WAS still sitting on his bedroom floor picking out a catcher’s mitt, and. while Ari Pappas was still talking to Susie, important things had been going on in the Unicorn’s Grove. Kate and Aurora had been very busy and now they were almost ready. Almost but not quite.

  “Ouch,” Kate said. “Watch out. You’re pinning my ear.”

  “Oops. Sorry.” Aurora pulled on a pin and a paper flower fell off the band she was arranging on Kate’s head. Kate’s brown hair was straight and slick and her flowery wreath kept sliding down over her eyes. Aurora’s wreath—a gray terry-cloth sweatband decorated with pink paper flowers—was already on her head, almost buried in her heavy tangle of crinkly sun-streaked hair.

  Aurora picked up the last flower and carefully pinned it back where it belonged. It had to be just right. In the books about unicorns all the maidens had wreaths of flowers in their hair. “There,” she said at last. “That looks great. Just don’t move your head too much when you dance. You know. Twirl gently. Like this.”

  Aurora raised her arms and twirled across the tiny clearing in small graceful circles, holding her head very still. Her long hair and her sheer white robe swirled and flowed around her, and her bare feet barely seemed to touch the grass. When she got to the other side she stopped and looked back at Kate. “Okay,” she said. “Your turn.”

  Kate’s sheer white robe matched Aurora’s because both of them had come from the same room in Kate’s house. At Aurora’s house no windows had ordinary decorations like sheer white curtains. That was because the Pappases were artistic. At Aurora’s house windows had beads or stained glass or even peacock feathers, but never curtains. But in the books the maidens who tamed the unicorns always wore long white robes, so it was lucky that Kate’s mother liked white curtains.

  Aurora thought Kate looked beautiful in her robe and wreath, even though the wreath kept falling down over her eyes and some of her twirls looked more like karate than ballet. When Kate finished her dance they both sat down under the sacred acacia tree, and Aurora opened her knapsack. The first thing she took out was her unicorn book. She didn’t even have to open it to the picture of the maiden taming the unicorn. The book opened there all by itself.

  When the book fell open Kate suddenly pointed and said, “Look.” She was pointing to the tree in the picture of the unicorn and the maiden. “That’s a willow tree, isn’t it?”

  Aurora nodded. “Yes, a weeping willow.”

  Kate looked up over their heads. Her forehead wrinkled in a worried frown. “And that’s an acacia tree, isn’t it? Do you suppose that will make a difference?”

  For a moment Aurora’s gray eyes clouded, but then she smiled. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Look, it says this picture was painted in Belgium. So—if our unicorn was Belgian it might make a difference. But a California unicorn probably won’t notice.” She nodded slowly. “In fact,” she said, “a California unicorn might even prefer acacia trees.”

  The next thing Aurora took out of her knapsack was her Walkman. As soon as she turned it on, unicorn music began to play. It was strange music, high-pitched and wavering, like the sounds of wind and water. Actually it was a tape that belonged to Aurora’s father, who liked to listen to weird things while he was doing his metal sculptures. Aurora and Kate had listened to a lot of music before they picked it out. They both thought it was just what a unicorn would like.

  Aurora turned down the volume. Then she took out Kate’s silver unicorn. Both Kate and Aurora had unicorn collections at home. They had unicorns made of china and clay and plastic and even spun glass. But Kate’s silver one was the most beautiful. And the most powerful. Aurora put the silver unicorn in the middle of the clearing, where its power could spread in all directions.

  Next was the golden bowl. Actually the golden bowl was made of brass, but it was the right color. Aurora arranged the bowl carefully on the ground between herself and Kate.

  “Now,” she whispered. “The water from the crystal fountain.”

  Kate took a bottle of Perrier out of the knapsack and poured it into the golden bowl. Then she took out the blood-red apple and the magic wand. When the wand and the apple were arranged next to the bowl there was nothing left to do. They sat very still with their legs crossed and their hands resting, palms upward, on their knees—and waited.

  According to Aurora’s book, unicorns liked to eat blood-red apples and drink water from sacred crystal springs. The unicorn would come to the grove because it was hungry and thirsty. When it saw the golden bowl and the maidens in their white robes, it would kneel down beside them. It would drink from the golden bowl and eat the apple. And if it let them touch its beautiful silver horn it would be theirs forever.

  Aurora had truly believed in unicorns since she was three years old. She didn’t know if she truly believed the unicorn would come to the grove today, but even if it didn’t come today she wouldn’t stop believing. She didn’t k
now for sure if Kate believed in the unicorn, but she knew that Kate would say she did if anyone asked her. Kate always said she believed the same things Aurora did.

  It was very quiet in the Unicorn’s Grove. Aurora’s legs were beginning to feel stiff and cramped. She straightened them out and then crossed them again. Kate was sitting very still. It was wonderful how long Kate could sit without moving when she really wanted to. When it was important to whatever she and Aurora were doing, Kate could do all sorts of remarkable things. Aurora was still admiring how Kate was sitting when she began to hear the strange sound.

  It was a whispery, shivery noise, like something moving in the dry grass. Perhaps like the sound of a timid unicorn carefully following the smell of a blood-red apple. Aurora started to poke Kate, but it wasn’t necessary. Kate had heard it too. Kate’s eyes were wide and startled-looking.

  The noise started and stopped and started again. Aurora could almost picture dainty unicorn hooves picking their way through the bamboo and acacia saplings. She was still listening and waiting, sitting very still with her open hands on her knees, when she heard another sound. A gasp and then a sneeze. A very definite sneeze.

  “Ahh-choo!”

  Chapter 6

  WHEN AURORA BACKED OUT of the bamboo thicket she was dragging something after her by the back of its shirt.

  “It’s Ari again,” she said. The “again” was because Ari was always following people and spying on everything they did. And it certainly wasn’t the first time Kate and Aurora had caught him red-handed.

  “Ari! I told you!” Kate said. What Kate had told Ari was that she was going to use him for karate practice if she ever caught him spying on them again. Now she was poised and ready, her chopping hand flat and stiff. Ari hadn’t seen her do it, but he’d heard she could crack a brick with that hand.

  “Wait a minute!” Ari squealed. “Wait a minute! Don’t chop. It’s not my fault. I had to come tell you. I have something very important to tell you.”