CHAPTER XX
The Statue Commands
Judy was beginning to understand. But something was wrong somewhere. She puzzled over it as they walked on toward the ruined mansion.
When they finally reached it, the scene before them appeared even more desolate than she remembered it. The snow that had fallen the day before was melting fast, so that only patches of it remained in shady places. There was none left around the burned house and very little under the blackened trees. But the vault was covered with it as if the cold from within had penetrated the cold without.
“Look!” Penny cried out as they climbed the steps toward the statue. “His face is just like the face in the magazine!”
“I don’t like him,” Paul said. “Why is he looking like that?”
“He’s meditating,” the magician explained.
“He isn’t alive, is he?” asked Penny. “What does that—that big word mean?”
“It means to think hard about the same thing over and over the way Sita did when she thought about Rama. It’s a little like wishing. You don’t always get your wishes, but you do feel quiet and peaceful inside so that outside things don’t hurt you any more. It’s hard for a little girl to understand,” the magician continued, “but the meditation of Sita kept all evil from her so that she was returned to Rama as pure and lovely as when the demon first snatched her away. It was the magic of her lover’s name that did it. When she called, ‘Rama! Rama!—’”
“Quiet!” a voice commanded.
They all stopped dead still to stare at the concrete face above them. The lips had not moved. There had not been a sign of life and yet the voice stopped them so still that Judy could hear her heart beating.