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Jess stood up, too. "What d'ya want to do?"

He shook his head. "Nah."

"OK," she said, suddenly brightening. "Why not?"

She got her boots and raincoat and considered the umbrella. "D'ya think we could swing across holding the umbrella?"

On Easter Monday the rain began again in earnest. It was as though the elements were conspiring to ruin their short week of freedom. Jess and Leslie sat cross-legged on the porch at the Burkes', watching the wheels of a passing truck shoot huge sprays of muddy water to its rear.

"Heck, let's go," he said.

"We better stop by your house and get your boots and things."

"That ain't no fifty-five miles per hour," Jess muttered.

"What I want to do is go to Terabithia," she said, looking out mournfully at the pouring rain.

He shrugged. "I don't have nothing that fits. I'll just go like this."

"I'll get you an old coat of Bill's." She started up the stairs. Judy appeared in the hallway.

Just then something came out of the window of the cab. Leslie jumped to her feet. "Litterbug!" she screamed after the already disappearing taillights.

"What are you kids doing?" It was the same words that Jess's mother might have used, but it didn't come out the same way. Judy's eyes were kind of fuzzed over as she spoke, and her voice sounded as though it were being broadcast from miles away.

"No. He said he wouldn't be back until late, not to worry."

"Is Bill back yet?"

"S'all right, Judy. We can get something ourselves."

"I used to like to walk in the rain." Judy smiled the kind of smile May Belle did in her sleep. "Well, if you two can manage…"

"We didn't mean to bother you, Judy."

"Fine," she said. "Oh," she said suddenly, and her eyes popped wide open. "Oh!" She almost ran back to her room, and the plinkety-plink of the typewriter began at once.

"Yeah."

"Sure."

Leslie looked down at her feet. "Oh, yeah," she said, as though she were just noticing them herself. "We thought we'd go out for a while."

Judy's eyes focused slightly. "You've got your boots on."

"That's all right, I'm stuck right now. I might as well stop. Have you had any lunch?"

"Is it raining again?"

He wondered what it would be like to have a mother whose stories were inside her head instead of marching across the television screen all day long. He followed Leslie up the hall to where she was pulling things out of a closet. She handed him a beige raincoat and a peculiar round black woolly hat.

Leslie was grinning. "She came unstuck."

"A pair of what?"

"Naw. I'd lose 'em in the mud. I'll just go barefoot."

The ground was cold. The icy mud sent little thrills of pain up their legs, so they ran, splashing through the puddles and slushing in the mud. P. T. bounded ahead, leaping fishlike from one brown sea to the next, then turning back to herd the two of them forward, nipping at their heels and further splashing their already sopping jeans.

"Hey," she said, emerging completely. "Me, too."

"No boots." Her voice was coming out of the depths of the closet and was muffled by a line of overcoats. "How about a pair of clumps?"

She stuck her head out between the coats. "Cleats. Cleats." She produced them. They looked like size twelves.

"Yeah." Jess looked up at the rope. It was still twisted around the branch of the crab apple tree. His stomach felt cold. "Maybe we ought to forget it today."

"Wow." Leslie's voice was respectful.

"C'mon, Jess. We can make it." The hood of Leslie's raincoat had fallen back, and her hair lay plastered to her forehead. She wiped her cheeks and eyes with her hand and then untwisted the rope. She unsnapped the top of her coat with her left hand. "Here," she said. "Stick P. T. in here for me."

When they got to the bank of the creek, they stopped. It was an awesome sight. Like in The Ten Commandments on TV when the water came rushing into the dry path Moses had made and swept all the Egyptians away, the long dry bed of the creek was a roaring eight-foot-wide sea, sweeping before it great branches of trees, logs, and trash, swirling them about like so many Egyptian chariots, the hungry waters licking and sometimes leaping the banks, daring them to try to confine it.

"I'll carry him, Leslie."

"With that raincoat, he'll slip right out the bottom." She was impatient to be gone, so Jess scooped up the sodden dog and shoved him rear-first into the cave of Leslie's raincoat.

"Catch!"

"Hold tight."

He stuck his hand out, but he was watching Leslie and P. T. and not concentrating on the rope, which slipped off the end of his fingertips and swung in a large arc out of his reach. He jumped and grabbed it, and shutting his mind to the sound and sight of the water, he ran back and then speeded forward. The cold stream lapped his bare heels momentarily, but then he was into the air above it and falling awkwardly and landing on his bottom. P. T. was on him immediately, muddy paws all over the beige raincoat, and pink tongue sandpapering Jess's wet face.

"I know. I know." She moved backward to get a running start.

"Good gosh, Jess."

He shut his mouth. He wanted to shut his eyes, too. But he forced himself to watch her run back, race for the bank, leap, swing, and jump off, landing gracefully on her feet on the far side.

Leslie's eyes were sparkling. "Arise"-- she barely swallowed a giggle --"arise, king of Terabithia, and let us proceed into our kingdom."

"You gotta hold his rear with your left arm and swing with your right, you know."

For Jess the fear of the crossing rose with the height of the creek. Leslie never seemed to hesitate, so Jess could not hang back. But even though he could force his body to follow after, his mind hung back, wanting to cling to the crab apple tree the way Joyce Ann might cling to Momma's skirt.

The king of Terabithia snuffled and wiped his face on the back of his hand. "I will arise," he replied with dignity, "when thou removes this fool dog off my gut."

They went to Terabithia on Tuesday and again on Wednesday. The rain continued sporadically, so that by Wednesday the creek had swollen to the trunk of the crab apple and they were running through ankle-deep water to make their flight into Terabithia. And on the opposite bank Jess was more careful to land on his feet. Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.

While they were sitting in the castle on Wednesday, it began suddenly to rain so hard that water came through the top of the shack in icy streams. Jess tried to huddle away from the worst of them, but there was no escaping the miserable invaders.

"Methinks some evil being has put a curse on our beloved kingdom."

Leslie dumped the contents of one coffee can on the ground and put the can under the worst leak.

"What?"

"Dost know what is in my mind, O king?"

"Damn weather bureau." In the dim light he could see Leslie's face freeze into its most queenly pose -- the kind of expression she usually reserved for vanquished enemies. She didn't want to kid. He instantly repented his unkingly manner.

Leslie chose to ignore it. "Let us go even up into the sacred grove and inquire of the Spirits what this evil might be and how we must combat it. For of a truth I perceive that this is no ordinary rain that is falling upon our kingdom."

"Right, queen," Jess mumbled and crawled out of the low entrance of the castle stronghold.

Under the pines even the rain lost its driving power. Without the filtered light of the sun it was almost dark, and the sound of the rain hitting the pine branches high above their heads filled the grove with a weird, tuneless music. Dread lay on Jess's stomach like a hunk of cold, undigested doughnut.

She seemed satisfied. At least she didn't poke him again. She just stood there quietly as if she was listening respectfully to someone talking to her. Jess was shivering, whether from the cold or the place, he didn't know. But he was glad when she turned to leave the grove. All he could think of was dry clothes and a cup of hot coffee and maybe just plunking down in front of the TV for a couple of hours. He was obviously not worthy to be king of Terabithia. Whoever heard of a king who was scared of tall trees and a little bit of water?

He raised his arms. "Um. Uh." He felt the point of her sharp elbow again. "Um. Yes. Please listen, thou Spirits."

Leslie lifted her arms and face up toward the dark green canopy. "O Spirits of the grove," she began solemnly. "We are come on behalf of our beloved kingdom which lies even now under the spell of some evil, unknown force. Give us, we beseech thee, wisdom to discern this evil, and power to overcome it." She nudged Jess with her elbow.

He swung across the creek almost too disgusted with himself to be afraid. Halfway across he looked down and stuck his tongue out at the roaring below. Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? Tra-la-la-la-la, he said to himself, then quickly looked up again toward the crab apple tree.

"Why don't we change our clothes and watch TV or something over at your house?"

Plodding up the hill through the mud and beaten-down grasses, he slammed his bare feet down hard. Left, left, he addressed them inside his head. Left my wife and forty-nine children without any gingerbread, think I did right? Right. Right by my…

"Yuk," she said smiling and began to run for the old Perkins place, that beautiful, graceful run of hers that neither mud nor water could defeat.

It had seemed to Jess when he went to bed Wednesday night that he could relax, that everything was going to be all right, but he awoke in the middle of the night with the horrible realization that it was still raining. He would just have to tell Leslie that he wouldn't go to Terabithia. After all, she had told him that when she was working on the house with Bill. And he hadn't questioned her. It wasn't so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was afraid to go; it was that he minded being afraid. It was as though he had been made with a great piece missing -- one of May Belle's puzzles with this huge gap where somebody's eye and cheek and jaw should have been. Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts. He hardly slept the rest of the night, listening to the horrid rain and knowing that no matter how high the creek came, Leslie would still want to cross it.

He felt like hugging her. "I'll make us some coffee," he said joyfully.