Moon Mirror by Andre Norton Page B

said. But he had liked it a lot. Lesley had better sneak those in and give them a good washing. And the milk—Lizzy could not understand how you got milk from a bottle a man brought to your house and notstraight from a cow. She seemed almost afraid to drink it. And she had not liked Coke at all—said it tasted funny.
    “I wish Matt was here.” Alex stood looking down at the sleeping bag, his face clouding up again. “Matt was fun—”
    “Sure he was. Here, shrimp, you catch ahold of that and help me carry this back. We've got to get it into the camper before Dad comes.”
    “Why?”
    Oh, dear, was Alex going to have one of his stubborn question-everything times? Lesley had put the plates and cups back into the big paper bag in which she had smuggled the food from the kitchen this morning, and was folding up the extra cover from Mart's bed.
    “You just come along and I'll tell you, shrimp,” she heard Rick say. Rick was just wonderful today. Though Mom always said that Rick could manage Alex better than anyone else in the whole family when he wanted to make the effort.
    There, she gave a searching look around as the boys left (one of the bags between them) this was cleared. They would take the other bag, and she would do the dishes. Then Dad could walk right in and never know that Lizzy and Matt had been here for two nights and a day.
    Two nights and a day—Lizzy had kept herself and Matt out of sight yesterday when Lesley and Rick had been at school. She would not go near the house, nor let Matt later when Alex wanted him to go and see the train Dad and Rick had set up in the family room. All she had wanted were newspapers. Lesley had taken those to her and some of themagazines Mom had collected for the Salvation Army. She must have read a lot, because when they met her after school, she had a million questions to ask.
    It was then that she said she and Matt had to go away, back to where they had come from, that they could not stay in this mixed up horrible world which was not the right one at all! Rick told her about the words on the stones and how long it had been. First she called him a liar and said that was not true. So after dark he had taken a flashlight and went back to show her the stone and the words.
    She had been the one to cry then. But she did not for long. She got to asking what was going to happen in the field, looking at the machines. When Rick told her, Lizzy had said quick and hot, no, they mustn't do that, it was dangerous—a lot of others might go through. And they, those in the other world, didn't want people who did bad things to spoil everything.
    When Rick brought her back she was mad, not at him, but at everything else. She made him walk her down to the place from which you could see the inter-city thru-way, with all the cars going whizz. Rick said he was sure she was scared. She was shaking, and she held onto his hand so hard it hurt. But she made herself watch. Then, when they came back, she said Matt and she—they had to go. And she offered to take Alex, Lesley, and Rick with them. She said they couldn't want to go on living here.
    That was the only time she talked much of what it was like there. Birds and flowers, no noise or cars rushing about norbulldozers tearing the ground up, everything pretty. It was Lesley who had asked then:
    “If it was all that wonderful, why did you want to come back?”
    Then she was sorry she had asked because Lizzy's face looked like she was hurting inside when she answered:
    “There was Ma and Pa. Matt, he's little, he misses Ma bad at times. Those others, they got their own way of life, and it ain't much like ours. So, we've kept a-tryin’ to get back. I brought somethin'—just for Ma.” She showed them two bags of big silvery leaves pinned together with long thorns. Inside each were seeds, all mixed up big and little together.
    “Things grow there,” she nodded toward the field, “they grow strange-like. Faster than seeds hereabouts. You put