Free The Magic Meadow by Alexander Key Page B

the corridor to the only other door within reach. It opened to his touch and he collapsed inside.
    He thought his ragged breathing would give him away as someone pounded past in the corridor. With an unsteady hand he fumbled around in the dark, found the safety latch on the door, and turned it. It wouldn’t protect him for long if a careful search were made, for the lock could be opened from the outside with a key. If that happened, of course, he could escape by going back to the dandelion place. Only, there was the problem of the lost bag.…
    Somehow he just couldn’t go back without it.
    While part of him listened to the men moving about in the corridor, rattling doorknobs and searching, he tried to think of all the possible places where the bag could be.
    He hadn’t noticed it on the cabinets outside, or on the floor. Then, with a sudden sinking sensation, he remembered Miss Preedy. He felt a little sick. Miss Preedy must have discovered the bag when she returned to Ward Nine after the typhus scare. In that case he’d never see it again.
    Footsteps crossed the corridor and paused by his door. A hand turned the knob and shook it. A man said, “I don’t think it was a prowler, Joe. It was just those fool beds. They weren’t stacked right.”
    â€œCould be,” came the muttered reply. “But I’d watch it anyway. In this part of town they’ll steal the fillings out of your teeth if you sleep with your mouth open.”
    Brick waited. The men went on. Finally all he could hear was the eternal grind of the surrounding city.
    He got up on his knees and felt for the safety latch. Instead, his fingers touched the light switch on the wall to the left of it. He pressed it and discovered he was in a linen closet piled with baskets of odds and ends awaiting removal.
    On the floor, within reach of his hand, was a big laundry bag so tightly packed that it was almost beyond his strength to lift it. It took only seconds for his trembling fingers to determine that it was the one he had been searching for.
    Brick’s relief was so great that for a long happy minute, while he clasped the bag tightly and willed himself back to the dandelion place, his head stopped throbbing, and all his aches vanished.
    Then, gradually, as more minutes passed and the expected change did not come, his throbs and aches began again. In rising desperation he tried harder, and harder still, but with the increasing effort his pains increased until he could no longer endure them. He cried out in sudden agony and stopped trying.
    Maybe, if he remained perfectly quiet for a while and thought about nothing at all, his head would clear up. But it was no use. His head continued to throb, and the least effort made it worse.
    Now in place of desperation came a growing fear. Maybe he had lost his ability entirely. Maybe the fall had cracked his head, and had doomed him to stay in this hated city for the rest of his days. Now he would never know what it was like to live in a place where people didn’t use locks on doors, where there was no rumble of traffic, and where you could go out and get all the strawberries you wanted for the picking.
    But that wasn’t the worst of it. He would never again see those who mattered the most to him—Princess and Nurse Jackson and Diz Dobie, and Lily Rose and poor Charlie Pill.…
    Tears flooded his eyes. He wiped them angrily. He could take it if he had to—but it didn’t seem right that someone like Charlie Pill should die because he, Brick, had received a crack on the head. Anyway, if a guy could do something as crazy and as complicated as teleporting, there was no reason why the same guy couldn’t do a simple thing like stopping a headache.
    He closed his eyes, told himself that he was going to sleep a while and that when he woke up his head would be healed and everything would be all right.
    Brick went to sleep almost instantly. When he awoke, which was