Her trunk curled round my shoulders. It was like a hug. “Me, too!” she told me. “I waited and waited, all these ten years!”
“Ten years?” I said.
“It is,” she said. “I counted. Last time I saw you was when I’d eaten all those apples. After you went, Romanov had to use some of his magic to make me better. And that was ten years ago now.”
I could still hardly believe it. “You really had ten years here? It’s only been about three weeks for me.” This explained why Mini seemed so much bigger. When I first met her, she must have been quite a young elephant, and she was full grown now.
Behind me, Toby and Grundo were discussing us. “That elephant’s really talking to him,” Toby observed.
“Yes,” Grundo answered. “She’s got a voice like a plummy old aunt, but I can’t quite hear the words. Can you?”
“Who are those sober, intellectual boys?” Mini asked me.
This made me giggle. There were times when Toby and Grundo were like two old men. I turned round and introduced everyone. “This is Mini,” I said, “my favorite elephant. Mini, that’s Toby, this is Grundo, and Roddy’s the girl on the grass. The twins over there are Isadora and Ilsabil, but don’t ask me which is which.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Mini said, politely swinging her trunk.
This made the Izzys start backward dramatically, but Roddy got up and said, “Pleased to meet you, Mini.” So all the girls could understand Mini. Interesting.
“Is Romanov here?” I asked.
“Yes, he’s just got back from somewhere,” Mini said. “He’s in the house.”
We all went over the hill together and down toward the house. It looked splendidly well kept now, made of pale wood and crisp blue stonework, with wide windows. The goat was outside the smart white front door, in a huddle of hens, bleating fit to burst. As we arrived, Romanov came out, wiping his face on a towel, to see what was the matter. We all stopped, and Roddy murmured, “I see what you meant now.” It was the effect Romanov had. He was at full power. He fair sizzled with it. Otherwise he looked just the same, a lean and energetic dark zigzag, and not at all as if ten years had passed.
“You again,” he said to me. It was flat and unwelcoming. “I dreamed ten years ago that you came back with a crowd of children.”
“When you were ill,” I said. “That may have colored your dreams. We need help—”
The goat was butting at Romanov and stamping and bleating. “Just a moment,” he said. He put both hands to Helga’s head. After a second he moved them along her sides. “Oh, you are in trouble,” he said to her, “but it’s all right now.” He took her by one horn and started to lead her away along the house.
“What’s the matter with her?” I said.
“She’s in labor,” Romanov said over his shoulder. “Going to have her kids any moment. You feed the hens for me, will you, while I get her bedded down in the shed. The rest of you go indoors and help yourselves to a drink in the kitchen.”
The Izzys clasped their hands and looked ecstatic. “Baby goats!” said one. “We’re coming to watch!” said the other.
Romanov looked back at them out of one eye in his zigzag profile. “No,” he said.
That was all. But it shut the Izzys up completely. They turned and followed Roddy into the house, as good as gold.
I went along to the shed, and Mini sauntered companionably beside me. Then she stood watching while I gave the hens their corn. One of her back legs began to rub up the other. I took the hint and made the shed provide elephant food, too. Really, I might never have been away, I felt so much at home here. I could hear Romanov in the next shed, heaving straw about and talking soothingly to Helga. I felt the fizz of him setting some kind of magic on her, too, probably to ease the birth for her. This is the life! I thought. But Romanov was obviously going to be quite a time with Helga, so I went back to the house.
The kitchen was all airy and wide and up-to-date this time. About the only thing in it that I remembered was the big wooden table. When I got there, Toby and Grundo were busily finding interesting food and drink in the refrigerator, and Roddy was going on at the Izzys.
“If either of you little beasts says one more thing to upset Grundo,” she was saying, “I shall do something so bad that you won’t know what’s hit you!”
Grundo didn’t seem upset to me. He was putting armfuls of potted puddings on the table, and the expression on his face was one of greedy joy. Nor did the Izzys look to be upsetting him. They were seizing puddings as they arrived and stacking them in two heaps, one for the kind they knew they liked, and the other for the kind they’d never seen before but hoped to get to like shortly. Behaving like normal girls for once, I thought. But that was Roddy for you. She’d just had a bad experience, and her reaction to any sort of upset was to fuss about Grundo.
“And don’t eat all the good kinds,” Roddy scolded. “Grundo’s entitled to eat a sweet he enjoys, too. And Toby,” she added as an afterthought.
“Roddy,” I said, “aren’t you entitled to something you like yourself? Or is it all for Grundo?”
A mistake. Her face flooded pink-red, her eyes flashed like dark stars, and she whirled round on me. I’d have been in trouble then if Romanov hadn’t come quietly up behind me. “One moment,” he said. “Something’s wrong here.”
We all jumped, because we hadn’t heard him come in, and stared nervously at him. He looked, very intently and keenly, from one to another of us. Toby said, scared but brave, “Is the goat all right?”
“Yes,” Romanov said. “She wants to be left to do it by herself.” And he continued looking from face to face—except that by this time he was darting his look between Roddy and Grundo. Roddy seemed plain puzzled. But Grundo, the fourth or fifth time that look stabbed at him, shifted from foot to foot and began to color up, in blotches between his freckles, until he almost seemed as if he had measles. “Are you going to tell us what you’re doing or shall I?” Romanov asked him, in a cutting, conversational way.