The Diamond War Read online

  Kate didn’t lower her chopping hand.

  “It’s a matter of life or death,” Ari said frantically.

  “I know,” Kate said. “Guess who’s going to die?”

  “It’s about the grove,” Ari blurted out. “The Unicorn’s Grove.”

  That was a mistake. Kate and Aurora looked at each other. “How’d you know about the Unicorn’s Grove?” Aurora asked. “I never told you.”

  “It doesn’t matter who told me.” Ari’s voice was turning into a desperate wail. “What I have to tell you is that the PROs are planning to chop it down. They’re planning to build a baseball diamond right here in the Weedpatch, only it’s not wide enough so they’re going to chop down the grove. Carlos and Eddy and Bucky are going to chop all this stuff”—Ari gestured around him—”all these little trees and bamboo right flat down and put first base right here. Right here in the middle of the grove.”

  Aurora caught her breath in a sharp gasp, and Kate’s chopping hand came slowly down. They stared at Ari with wide eyes.

  For what seemed like a long time no one said anything. Kate was the first one to begin talking—and asking questions.

  “When?” she said.

  “Tomorrow, I think. Susie said she thought they were going to start tomorrow.”

  Kate and Aurora looked at each other and nodded. “Susie,” they said. “Yes, Susie knows about the grove.” Susie Garcia was always trying to be a part of their games. Once in a while they let her, like one time when they’d let her be a junior unicorn maiden after she’d promised and double promised not to tell a soul.

  “Yeah,” Ari said. “She heard Carlos talking on the phone to Bucky about chopping down the grove. She was mad at him for eating up all the Dove bars so she decided to tell you. Only you weren’t home so she told me.”

  Aurora’s face was stiff and pale. She looked around at the clearing where she and Kate had pulled out all the weeds and then bordered the cleared area with smooth gray-white stones. She looked at the sacred circle in the center of the clearing with its silver unicorn and golden bowl. Then she looked at Kate. “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

  Kate didn’t hesitate for a minute. “We won’t let them,” she said. Her voice was quick and angry.

  “What are we going to do to stop them?” Aurora’s voice was a breathy whisper.

  “Yeah, what?” Ari asked at the same moment. “What?” was a good question. It was one of the questions reporters were supposed to ask. Along with “who?” “where?” “when?” and “why?” you were supposed to ask “what?” In this case the “what” was—“What are you going to do to them, Kate?”

  Kate’s face was beginning to look bluish, as if she’d been holding her breath like a little kid having a tantrum. Ari had seen her look that way before and it generally meant someone was in real trouble. “I’ll kill them,” Kate said.

  Ari felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to quiver. He looked at his sister. “Aurora?” he asked frantically.

  Aurora was staring at Kate. “She doesn’t mean that kind of kill,” she said. “She means the kind where you—like, put a spell on them. Where you put them under a spell. That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Kate?”

  Kate blinked several times. Then she took a deep breath. Her face began to look a little less blue. “Yeah,” she said. “Like she says. We’ll put a spell on them.”

  She looked at Aurora. Ari was looking at Aurora too. “How?” he asked. Kate nodded.

  “How?” she asked. “What kind of a spell?”

  “Well,” Aurora said. “Let’s see.” She put her hands together and interlaced her fingers. Then she slowly wiggled her fingers back and forth. She always did that when she was thinking. Her flowery wreath and a swoop of crinkly hair had slipped down across her forehead, almost hiding her eyes. “Let’s see,” she said again. “Let me think.”

  Aurora and Kate were still in the Unicorn’s Grove when Athena finally said good-bye to Prince and ran home to eat her breakfast. But then she came right back because the Anderson grandkids had asked her to play. They were playing on the swings in the Andersons’ backyard when Mr. A. came out of the house. Mr. A., as most of the Castle Court kids called him, was a tall man with lots of white hair and a very big smile. Athena and the grandkids jumped off the swings and ran to meet him.

  The grandkids said, “Hi, Grandpa,” and Athena said, “Hi, Mr. A.” And when he said he was on his way to check on old Prince, Athena said, “Me too.”

  When they got to the fence Prince was out in the middle of the pasture lying down. Mr. A. called to him and he raised his head and looked toward the fence, but he didn’t get up.

  “Why doesn’t he come to see us?” the littlest grandkid said. “He always comes to see Athena.”

  “Guess the old boy is feeling tired,” Mr. A. said. “You know Prince is a very old horse.”

  “Maybe he won’t come because we don’t have a carrot,” the other grandkid said. “Athena always brings him a carrot.”

  “I’ll get him another one,” Athena said, and she jumped down off the fence and ran toward home. She ran all the way to her own yard thinking about a carrot, but when she got there she saw something so interesting she forgot all about it.

  Something unusual was happening in the gazebo in the backyard of number eight Castle Court. Aurora and Kate and Ari and Susie Garcia were sitting in a circle talking about something important. Athena could tell it was really important because no one was laughing or even smiling. Not even Susie, who was almost always laughing—except when she was yelling at somebody.

  Athena knew that big kids don’t let four-year-olds be part of something really important, so she just went quietly to her room. As soon as she got there she opened her window and leaned way out. Sometimes when she leaned out of her window she could hear what people were saying a long way off. Even as far off as the gazebo.

  Athena leaned farther out of the window and strained her ears, but she still couldn’t quite hear. She was holding her breath and leaning even farther when Aurora suddenly called her name. Athena almost fell out of the window.

  “Athena! Come here, Athena,” Aurora called again, and Athena scrambled back inside her room and came running. When she got to the gazebo Aurora said, “Sit down in the council circle, Athena.” Kate looked surprised and then frowned, but Aurora just went oh nodding slowly. “I have a mysterious feeling that Athena can help,” she said.

  Athena scooted up on the bench in the council circle, folded her hands, and tried to look serious and thoughtful. But she was so excited she could hardly sit still. She didn’t know yet what mysterious thing she was going to do to help. In fact, she didn’t even know yet who needed to be helped. But she felt sure that she was going to find out very soon.

  Chapter 7

  THE PAPPAS GAZEBO WAS a good place to hold a mysterious council meeting because it was that kind of a place—mysterious. It had once been a pretty ordinary gazebo—a little round outdoorsy kind of room with fancy wooden decorations all around the roof. But then Athena’s father painted it black and purple and decorated it with a bunch of his sculptures. So now fat lumpy things with goat heads and scorpion tails sat on the roof, a big bronze snake climbed up one of the posts, and a blobby monster with a huge mouth and lots of teeth dangled down from the ceiling.

  Athena knew that some people thought that what her father had done to the gazebo was scary and terrible, but she liked it fine—except after dark. And it was just right for a mysterious council meeting—in broad daylight with lots of other people around. She squeezed her hands together and tried very hard to sit still.

  After Athena joined the council no one said anything for a long time. Except for Ari, who was writing in his notebook, no one did anything either, or even moved. After a while Athena leaned over and poked him. “What are we waiting for?” she whispered.

  “Shhh,” he said. “We’re waiting for Aurora to get a mysterious feeling about how to do the spell.”
r />   Athena didn’t understand. Very, very quietly she made her lips shape the words “What’s a spell?”

  Ari leaned closer and whispered that they were going to do a spell that would keep first base out of the Unicorn’s Grove.

  Athena nodded uncertainly. She knew about unicorns of course. Unicorns were horses with one big horn. Kate and Aurora had lots of them.

  “What’s a grove?” she whispered.

  Ari frowned and tried to scoot away. But after she asked again he whispered, “A grove is a bunch of trees where unicorns live. Like that bunch of trees at Dragoland. Only Carlos and Bucky are going to chop it down and make it into first base.” Then he moved over across the circle so she couldn’t ask him any more questions.

  Athena thought she understood about the grove, but she still wasn’t sure about the spell. The only spell she knew about was what grown-ups did when they didn’t want you to know what they were talking about. Like “S-H-O-T-S.” “S-H-O-T-S” was what grown-ups spelled when you were going to have to go to the doctor and they didn’t want you to start crying before you got there. But she was pretty sure they weren’t talking about that kind of a spell at the council. She bit her lip and clenched her fists and tried very hard to sit still and wait. After a while Kate started talking.

  Kate was the first person at the council to start talking, and what she was talking about was shooting people with slingshots.

  “I know how to make these humongous slingshots,” she said. “I mean, real killers. And we could make a fort inside the grove. We could put up sort of a wall to hide behind in the clearing and then we could pile up a bunch of rocks and when they start to cut the trees we could run out and—”

  Kate crouched down on the floor of the gazebo, picked up an imaginary rock, and jumped to her feet. She pulled back an imaginary slingshot and yelled, “Okay, you nerds. You want first base? You got first base! Look out. Here it comes!” Then she shot the imaginary rock so hard she almost fell over the table.

  “Yeah,” Susie said. “Let’s clobber them. I want to clobber Carlos.”

  Athena knew that Carlos was Susie’s big brother. She thought it was interesting that Susie wanted to clobber him. She looked across the council circle to where Ari had moved to get away from her questions. He was sitting cross-legged on the bench and he had his writing notebook on one of his knees. He was writing something in the notebook. For a minute she practiced wanting to clobber her big brother. It wouldn’t be too hard, she decided. Ari was pretty skinny, and besides he was always so busy writing it would be easy to sneak up on him—and whack!

  Whack, she thought, looking at the way Ari’s tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth and how he had his notebook balanced on one of his skinny knees. She shrugged. Whacking Ari didn’t seem like it would be all that much fun. Maybe it would be more fun if your brother was as big as Carlos Garcia.

  Aurora hadn’t said anything yet. She’d been sitting very still with her eyes wide open but not seeing anything. You could tell she wasn’t seeing anything by the woozy look in her eyes. The other people at the council kept looking at Aurora like they were waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t. Athena wished Aurora would hurry up and tell about the spell.

  Athena was still watching Ari writing in his notebook and trying hard not to squirm, when Ari suddenly said, “I have an idea. What I think we ought to do is to send a message to the PROs. We ought to send a message that we don’t want them to chop down the grove. And maybe that we want to have a meeting with them to talk about it.”

  The other people at the council meeting looked at Ari.

  Kate made a snorting noise. “Talk,” she said. “It won’t do any good to talk to those creeps.”

  Susie nodded her head hard. “You can’t talk to Carlos,” she said.

  “How do you know?” Ari asked. “Have you ever tried it?”

  Susie glared at Ari. “Of course I’ve tried it. He’s my brother. I tried it just a few days ago and all he did was throw a ball at me.”

  Ari looked worried. “Carlos throws baseballs at people?”

  “Basketballs,” Susie said.

  Ari shrugged. “Well, that’s not quite as bad,” he said.

  “I know,” Susie said, “but that’s just because a basketball is what he’s always carrying around. Just wait till they start playing baseball.”

  But Aurora didn’t seem to be interested in what Susie was saying. She was looking at Ari and her eyes had stopped having the woozy look. “What would the message to the PROs say?” she asked. “What exact words?”

  “Well.” Ari looked at his notebook for a minute. Then he asked, “How do you spell environment?”

  “E-n-v-i,” Kate started.

  “O-r-n-a-ment,” Aurora went on.

  Ari erased and wrote for a minute. Then he put his pencil behind his ear and arranged his notebook carefully on his knee.

  “I’ve been doing a practice one,” he said. “Maybe it could say something like this…” Ari opened his notebook and began to read.

  Ari cleared his throat and began to read his message to the PROs in a stiff grown-up voice. “Dear PROs,” he read. “This message is from a whole bunch of important people who won’t let you cut down any trees at Dragoland. There are a lot of reasons why we won’t let you. One reason is because of the envi-ornament and the ecology. Another reason is that the grove does not belong to you. It does not belong to us either, but we have been using it for something important for a long time and you haven’t. Another reason is that there are a lot of us.”

  “How’s that?” Ari asked.

  “But there wasn’t anything about a meeting,” Aurora said.

  “Oh yeah,” Ari said. Then he stuck out the tip of his tongue again and wrote some more. He wrote for quite a while. When he was finished he read, “We would like to have a meeting to talk about it. Tonight before dinner, at the Weedpatch. Please write an answer and send it back with the messenger.”

  Everyone nodded, particularly Aurora. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. That’s really good, Ari. Take it to the Garcias’ right away.”

  “Me?” Ari said. “I didn’t say anything about being the messenger. I mean, I’ve gotten messages from those guys before.” He clenched his fist and pretended to hit himself in the side of the head. “Kapow! That’s a Bucky Brockhurst message. Kapow!” He hit himself again.

  Kate looked as if she’d been holding her breath again. “I’ll take the message,” she said. “I’d just like to see that Bucky creep try to kapow me.”

  “No,” Aurora said quickly. “That wouldn’t do any good. We need to talk to them. Karate chopping them is not going to make them talk to us.” Aurora looked at Susie for a minute and then shook her head. Then she looked at Athena. Athena began to feel very excited. She tried not to bounce up and down because big kids don’t bounce when they are excited.

  Aurora looked at her for a long time. Then she looked far away with the woozy look in her eyes again. When she looked back at Athena she said, “Athena will help us. I have a feeling Athena will help save the Unicorn’s Grove.”

  Athena stood up as straight and tall as she could. She was very glad to find out what she could do to help. “I can do it. I can take the message to Carlos.”

  “Yeah. That’s a great idea,” Ari said. “That way nobody will get hurt. Nobody’s going to clobber a four-year-old. Not even old Bucky.”

  Aurora’s eyes were very woozy. “Athena will save the grove,” she said in a whispery voice, as if she were talking to somebody in a dream.

  “How?” Kate asked. “How is Athena going to do it?” But Aurora only shook her head.

  Athena took the message from Ari. “I’m going to take the message,” she said. “That’s how.”

  Athena started off for the Garcias’ house holding the message carefully in both hands. Just as she got to the sidewalk a car turned into Castle Court. It was the big shiny blue car that belonged to the Brockhursts. As it went past, Athena could
see Bucky Brockhurst in the front seat with his father and Muffy Brockhurst in the backseat with her mother. Athena nodded knowingly. The Brockhurst family always rode that way—and everybody knew why. Everybody knew that Bucky and Muffy fought too much to ride in the same seat.

  Athena, who was always very careful about cars, waited and watched until the car disappeared into the Brockhursts’ garage. Then she started across the street.

  Crossing the cul-de-sac, she walked very tall and straight. She didn’t run or skip. Taking the message to the PROs was too important for skipping. At the planter island she stopped to unfold the paper carefully and read a few words, just to see if the message was still all right.

  Even though she was only four Athena could read quite a lot of words. Aurora and Ari had been early readers and so was Athena. Athena could already read all the words in The Cat in the Hat. But those words were in printing. Now that Ari was in third grade he was writing most of his words in cursive. Athena knew all about cursive. She couldn’t read it very well yet, but she’d heard Ari read the message out loud so that helped. She could pick out the words trees and cut and bad. She also found a long word that started with a D that probably was Dragoland. It made her feel very good to read such a long word in cursive. She stopped two more times to unfold the message and find the word Dragoland, to be sure she could still read it. Then she folded the paper very carefully and went up the walk to the Garcias’ front door.

  Chapter 8

  WHILE ATHENA WAS STILL on her way across Castle Court the back door of the Brockhurst house slammed open and Bucky shot out. He skidded to a stop, dropped down into a starting-block crouch, and kicked off into an all-out run—hundred-yard-dash practice.

  At the low hedge between his house and Carlos’s he practiced his hurdle-jumping technique. After he cleared the hedge he zigged and zagged clear around the Garcias’ swimming pool carrying an imaginary football and skillfully avoiding half a dozen imaginary tacklers. As he zigged past a water-polo ball he grabbed it up and dribbled it across the cement part of the patio. Then, tossing the ball back toward where he’d found it, he revved up to full speed again. Just before he got to the stairs he dove headfirst into a belly slide. Jumping to his feet, he yelled, “Safe at home!” and pounded up the stairs to bang on the Garcias’ back door. After a minute Carlos came out.