Though there's nothing in this chapter about dogs, I'm dedicating it to one. My cousins' (KireKhane Faerring and Queen Su) dog, Texas Shadow, was one of the sweetest, cutest, most lovable and mischievous little canines around and we're all going to miss him very much.
Now, since I have nothing else to say for once...on with the story!
As Lucinda welcomed Annaleigh and Peter inside, a thump came from above their heads. Then, the sound of pounding feet came from the stairs, and seconds later, a boy Peter's age skidded around the corner. He had light brown hair and green eyes with a mischievous twinkle in them. Freckles abounded on his round face.
"Hi, Peter!" he said excitedly, a huge dimpled grin on his face.
Peter returned the greeting with his own wide smile, and then Lucinda said, "Bernie, why don't you help Peter take his things up to your room while Mrs. Pevensie and I have a chat."
"Oh," Annaleigh said as she handed Peter's pillow to Bernie. "I can't stay. Tonight's Edmund and Lucy's bath night, and George will need help with Edmund."
"Just for a moment," insisted Lucinda. "I have a new dress pattern that I'd like to show you."
As their mothers moved farther into the living room to examine the pattern, Bernie said "C'mon!" and led Peter around the corner and up the stairs. The two boys rushed through the second door on the left and deposited Peter's bag and pillow in a corner. Then Peter gasped.
"What's that?" he exclaimed, pointing at a large glass terrarium on the window seat. It was filled with green plants, little pebbles, a large rock, and a wide, shallow dish of water.
"Here, I'll show you," said Bernie. The boys moved over to the box and Bernie lifted the screened lid off. Peter watched as his friend squinted inside and then stuck his arm in.
"There!" Bernie said after a moment of fishing around in the box, then triumphantly pulled his hand back out and showed the thing that he held to Peter.
"It's a frog!" Peter said with a grin. The creature that Bernie held certainly couldn't be mistaken for anything else. It was about the size of Peter's fist, light green, slimy, and had large, bulging eyes. The two boys giggled as the frog let out a loud croak.
"I have two of them: a boy and a girl. Dad brought them home yesterday," Bernie proclaimed proudly. "I haven't named them yet. Wanna help?"
Peter enthusiastically agreed and Bernie handed him the frog to hold while he fished out the other one. After admiring the frogs for several minutes, the boys decided to name the male frog "Sir Barton" and the female "Lady Marie".
"I haven't fed them yet today, either," commented Bernie. "It's so much fun to watch them eat!"
"Can we feed them now?" asked Peter.
"Yep," came the answer, and then Bernie was rummaging through a drawer that pulled out of the window seat. "Oh, I forgot. I left the box downstairs earlier. C'mon!"
The boys rushed out of the room and stampeded down the stairs. Bernie headed straight to the kitchen, but Peter lingered at the bottom of the stairs and peeked around the corner toward the entryway. Annaleigh, preparing to return home, caught sight of her son and motioned him to her. When he came near, she drew him into her arms for one last embrace.
"Remember what I told you," she whispered into his ear.
"Yes, Mum," he whispered back.
"Don't be afraid to tell Mrs. Chesterton if you need to come home."
"I'll be fine."
"All right, dear," she pulled away and opened the front door. "Goodnight, Peter. Goodbye, Lucinda!"
"Goodbye, Annaleigh!" Said Mrs. Chesterton cheerfully, but Peter just waved. Noting the apprehensive expression on his face, the kind woman put her arm around him and led him back toward the kitchen, saying, "Come along, I'm sure Bernie is wondering where you are. You two are going to have so much fun tonight!"
Sure enough, when they got back to the kitchen, Bernie said to Peter, "Where have you been?" Then, not giving his friend a chance to answer, he continued excitedly. "C'mon, I found the crickets!"
As the boys dashed back upstairs, Mrs. Chesterton called after them. "Make sure that all of those crickets end up in the terrarium, you two!"
Once back in Bernie's room, they carefully put several crickets into the frogs' habitat, and then delightedly watched each insect disappear into the amphibians' mouths. However, soon the frogs had consumed all of the crickets, and the boys grew restless from just staring at them. Then, Bernie had the bright idea of taking the frogs out of the terrarium again. Soon, the boys were busy making a castle out of wooden blocks for the frogs to inhabit. They worked at it for nearly an hour, for it seemed that there were infinite ways for the frogs to escape their new abode. But once they had successfully finished the block castle, the boys grew bored once again, and Peter remembered his new book.
"Here, Bernie, look," he said, pulling the book out of his bag.
Bernie sat next to Peter on the floor and stared at the cover. "Why is the cover so..."
"Colorful? Edmund drew on it."
"I'm so glad I don't have a little brother to scribble on my books,"
Peter shrugged. "I was mad at first, but I forgave him. Mum said Grandfather could probably find a way to fix it. He's the one who gave it to me." He opened the book and began showing his friend the beautiful pictures.
When they were several pages into the book, Bernie pointed to a picture and exclaimed, "Look! It's a joust! And a real one; not like the one we had,"
Several weeks before, Peter had gotten the grand idea of the two having a joust in his backyard. So they had gathered their mothers' mops for lances, a couple of pots for helmets, and Susan and Lucy to watch. Then, they had run full-speed at each other, tightly clutching the leveled "lances". Seconds later, they were both lying flat on their backs in the grass and Susan was running into the Pevensie home yelling for her mum. When Annaleigh had come outside, she found Peter with a split lip and his front teeth loose and Bernie with a black eye. The two boys bravely didn't cry as she cleaned them up, though understandably they had gotten a few tears in their eyes. And that night, they could be heard proudly telling their fathers how they had gained their injuries.
"I'm hungry," Bernie announced after they had perused the book for a while longer. Not surprisingly, this comment came after the boys had looked at a page of the book that contained a picture of a feast.
Peter's stomach rumbled at that moment in agreement to Bernie's statement, so they put the book away and prepared to go downstairs to ask for a snack. But as they were on the way out of Bernie's bedroom door, Peter said, "Wait, shouldn't we put the frogs away?"
The two rushed to the block castle and peered inside. "There's Lady Marie," said Bernie, scooping up the amphibian and plopping her back into the terrarium on the window seat. "Do you see Sir Barton?"
Peter scanned the castle carefully. "Nope," Then, he squinted at its far corner and pointed. "Bernie, is that…a hole in the back?"
Bernie reached his hand in and froze. Then, he looked at Peter, wide-eyed. "It is," he whispered, and the two boys stared at each other in horror.
"Is it…is it big enough for Sir Barton to escape?" Peter asked hesitantly.
"I think so," came the tiny reply.
They stared at each other and the hole in the castle wall for a few more seconds before they exploded into activity. Bernie lunged for his bed and dove underneath it, wildly tossing various toys and articles of clothing out from under it while Peter looked under the desk in the corner. A minute later, Peter completed his search under the desk and checked under and around his pillow and bag. No sooner had he finished this than Bernie scrambled out from under the bed and jumped on top of it, tossing pillows and stuffed animals every which way.
"Peter," he said breathlessly as he yanked the rumpled covers back and searched through the sheets. "Could you look in the closet?"
After looking over the room with his eyes and locating the partially open closet door, Peter jumped up and threw the door fully open. His enthusiasm for the search ended there, however, when his blue eyes met the sight before them.
"Um, Bernie, do we have to look in the closet?"
"Yes. Frogs like dark places," the boy informed as he scanned the bookshelf for anything that might move.
Peter stared at the large, cluttered, yawning, black space that was Bernie's closet. "Do you…do you think that maybe you could look in the closet?" he asked weakly.
Having searched every other inch of his room, Bernie came over next to Peter and gave him a nudge. "C'mon, move. Let's both look."
Unable to escape due to the fact that Bernie was pressed close behind him, Peter had no choice but to move into the closet. It was even darker inside than it had looked from the bedroom, and he found himself holding his breath and groping for the wall.
"Hmm, looks like we'll need a light." Bernie pronounced, unable to even see the floor in front of him. "Stay here, I'll be right back."
"But-"
Bernie rushed out of the closet. Peter turned around to go back into Bernie's bedroom and wait for him to return, but as he stepped toward the light, the closet door swung closed. Bernie had inadvertently bumped it on his way out, and Peter found himself trapped. Groping around in the dark, Peter began breathing heavily as he searched for the door. When he finally found it, he nearly hyperventilated when he discovered that there wasn't a doorknob on his side. He began pounding frantically on the door and yelling for Bernie, Mrs. Chesterton, anyone, to let him out. What seemed like an eternity passed, and no one came. Peter slumped to the floor, tears running down his cheeks. The darkness seemed to become thicker, closing in around him, and he tightly hugged his knees to his chest and buried his head in them. Somehow, the darkness didn't seem quite as black when he couldn't see it.
Suddenly, Peter lifted his head as his eyes flew open. He strained his ears, trying to locate the sound that had penetrated his fear. There…there it was again! A tiny thump came from farther in the closet, followed by rustling noises. It seemed to move closer, and Peter felt his panic level rising again. Then for a moment, the noise stopped, and Peter held his breath, not wanting to breathe for fear that the thing, whatever it was, would hear him and move closer. Then, the thing thumped again, closer than ever. Peter whimpered and pressed his back closer to the door.
"Help me," he whispered. Then, as the thing rustled close to him once again, he jumped up and began pounding on the door and screaming again.
"What in the world?" Light flooded the closet as the door suddenly opened to reveal Mrs. Chesterton. "Oh, Peter, dear, what happened?"
He didn't reply, just buried his face in her dress as she pulled him close in a comforting embrace.
"Oh, there, there. You're safe now." She patted his back gently and stroked his hair until his breathing calmed and his tears slowed. "Do you want me to call your mum?" Mrs. Chesterton inquired when he pulled away and began wiping the tears from his face.
Peter seemed to hesitate for a moment, then in a voice much stronger than expected, he said, "No."
"Are you quite certain, dear?"
He nodded firmly, then looked bashfully at the ground, embarrassed.
"And you!" Mrs. Chesterton spun around suddenly and pointed a finger at Bernie, who had been watching the scene wide-eyed. "What on earth were you thinking, leaving Peter all alone? And locked in the closet of all things! Why, that's no way for my son to behave!"
"I didn't know he was locked in the closet," Bernie said weakly. "I'm sorry, Peter."
"That's all right," Peter said. "I know you didn't mean to."
"Well," said Mrs. Chesterton, not to let her son off quite as easily. "I'd like to know what you were doing downstairs alone in the first place, young man."
Bernie held up a candle and some matches. "I was getting these."
His mother narrowed her eyes. "Why?"
"The closet light is out, and we couldn't see."
"What did you need to get out of the closet?"
Bernie looked at Peter nervously. "Nothing,"
"Then why did you need a light?"
"We were looking for something." Bernie's eyes shifted around the room, looking anywhere but at his mother.
She lifted an eyebrow. "Care to tell me exactly what that something was?"
Bernie and Peter looked at each other, knowing that they were caught red-handed. "Um," Bernie said. "Can I tell you later?"
Mrs. Chesterton crossed her arms and tapped her foot. "I would prefer to know now, Bernard," she said sternly.
"Fine." He shifted his feet, then cleared his throat and looked directly at his mother. "We were looking for Sir Barton."
A strange expression came over Lucinda Chesterton's face. "Who," she said slowly, "is 'Sir Barton'?"
Peter piped up. "Bernie's frog. The big one. We named him Sir Barton."
"Sir Barton?" she repeated.
"Yes, and he escaped from the castle."
"We looked everywhere in my room, Mum, but we couldn't find him. I think he's in the closet."
The two boys thought Mrs. Chesterton looked rather like a fish as she stood there for a moment, her eyes wide and her mouth opening and closing without a sound. Then, she turned around and made a quick retreat from the room. She paused at the top of the stairs, and the boys heard her call back, "If that frog is not found within the space of ten minutes, Bernard Lloyd Chesterton, I will have your father remove the two creatures from your custody and from this house!"
Peter and Bernie stared at each other for a moment, then burst into giggles. Then, Peter pointed towards the closet.
"Look!"
Bernie turned, and there, sitting calmly outside the closet door, was the missing frog. Bernie scrambled over and scooped him up. Sir Barton let out a disgruntled croak as the boy carried him across the room and deposited him back in the terrarium.
"There, all done. C'mon, Peter, let's see if Mum has a snack for us."
Bernie rushed out of the room immediately, but Peter stopped near the closet door. With satisfaction, he shut it firmly, sealing the dark away and feeling as though he'd won a victory. But that didn't stop him from feeling a knot deep down in his stomach as he glanced out of Bernie's bedroom window at the dark, moonless night that had fallen.
"Peter!"
Bernie's voice broke Peter away from his nervous thoughts. He turned from the window and ran from the room, ready to forget his fears…for the time being.
Let me know what you think! Any questions, comments, and/or suggestions will be greatly appreciated! :)
