Lynne Banks - The Indian in the Cupboard Complete Collection

“Don’t you speak English?” asked Omri. All the Indians in films spoke a sort of English; it would be terrible if his Indian couldn’t. How would they talk to each other?

The Indian lowered his knife a fraction.

“I speak,” he grunted.

Omri breathed deeply in relief. “Oh, good! Listen, I don’t know how it happened that you came to life, but it must be something to do with this cupboard, or perhaps the key – anyway, here you are, and I think you’re great, I don’t mind that you stabbed me, only please can I pick you up? After all, you are my Indian,” he finished in a very reasonable tone.

He said all this very quickly while the Indian stared at him. The knife-point went down a little further, but he didn’t answer.

“Well? Can I? Say something!” urged Omri impatiently.

“I speak slowly ,” grunted the miniature Indian at last.

“Oh.” Omri thought, and then said, very slowly, “Let – me – pick – you – up.”

The knife came up again in an instant, and the Indian’s knees bent into a crouch.

“No.”

“Oh, please .”

“You touch – I kill!” the Indian growled ferociously.

You might have expected Omri to laugh at this absurd threat from a tiny creature scarcely bigger than his middle finger, armed with only a pin-point. But Omri didn’t laugh. He didn’t even feel like laughing. This Indian – his Indian – was behaving in every way like a real live Red Indian brave, and despite the vast difference in their sizes and strengths, Omri respected him and even, odd as it sounds, feared him at that moment.

“Oh, okay, I won’t then. But there’s no need to get angry. I don’t want to hurt you.”Then, as the Indian looked baffled, he said, in what he supposed was Indian-English, “Me – no – hurt – you.”

“You come near, I hurt you ,” said the Indian swiftly.

Omri had been half lying in bed all this time. Now, cautiously and slowly, he got up. His heart was thundering in his chest. He couldn’t be sure why he was being cautious. Was it so as not to frighten the Indian, or because he was frightened himself? He wished one of his brothers would come in, or better still, his father… But no one came.

Standing in his bare feet he took the cupboard by its top corners and turned it till it faced the window. He did this very carefully but nevertheless the Indian was jolted, and, having nothing to hold on to, he fell down. But he was on his feet again in a second, and he had not let go of his knife.

“Sorry,” said Omri.

The Indian responded with a noise like a snarl.

There was no more conversation for the next few minutes. Omri looked at the Indian in the early sunlight. He was a splendid sight. He was about seven centimetres tall. His blue-black hair, done in a plait and pressed to his head by a coloured headband, gleamed in the sun. So did the minuscule muscles of his tiny naked torso, and the reddish skin of his arms. His legs were covered with buckskin trousers which had some decoration on them too small to see properly, and his belt was a thick hide thong twisted into a knot in front. Best of all, somehow, were his moccasins. Omri found himself wondering (not for the first time recently) where his magnifying glass was. It was the only way he would ever be able to see and appreciate the intricate embroidery, or beadwork, or whatever it was which encrusted the Indian’s shoes and clothes.

Omri looked as closely as he dared at the Indian’s face. He expected to see paint on it, war-paint, but there was none. The turkey-feather which had been stuck in the headband had come out when the Indian fell and was now lying on the floor of the cupboard. It was about as big as the spike on a conker, but it was a real feather. Omri suddenly asked:

“Were you always this small?”

“I no small! You, big!” the Indian shouted angrily.

“No—” began Omri, but then he stopped.

He heard his mother beginning to move about next door.

The Indian heard it too. He froze. The door of the next room opened. Omri knew that at any moment his mother would come in to wake him for school. In a flash he had bent down and whispered, “Don’t worry! I’ll be back.” And he closed and locked the cupboard door and jumped back into bed.

“Come on, Omri. Time to get up.”

She bent down and kissed him, paying no attention to the cupboard, and went out again, leaving the door wide open.

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