Seven-Day Magic (14 page)

"We can't," she said. "You forgot. So did I. It's a seven-day book, and today's Saturday. It's due back at the library right now."

"Then the magic's over," said Abbie.

"Not necessarily," said Barnaby. "I could have my wish, and
then
we could take it back. It'd still be today."

"What about me?" said John.

"I was forgetting," said Barnaby.

"I wasn't," said John. "I could have my wish,
too,
and then we could take it back."

"Two wishes in the same day?" Susan was doubtful. "It might be awfully hard on it."

Barnaby had an idea. "Or even better," he said excitedly, "why take it back at all? Till we're good and ready, I mean. We've kept books out overtime before this when they were due and we hadn't finished with them. We could club together and pay the fine!"

Susan still looked doubtful, and Abbie thought it was time to speak.

"It'd be wrong," she said regretfully. "I
know
it would. It'd be breaking the rules of the magic, and you know what happens when somebody does
that!
"

"That's usually the most exciting part," said Fredericka. "
Let's!
"

"Three against two," said Barnaby. "That's fair enough."

He looked at Abbie. But what could Abbie say?

"All right, then," he went on. "We win. The book stays out till we're through with it. You won't mind if I have my turn today, will you, old man? You can have yours tomorrow. I know just what I'm going to wish."

"Yes, I
do
mind," said John with unwonted stubbornness. "I know just what
I'm
going to wish,
too
."

"Later," said Barnaby, reaching for the book. But John got in his way.

"Your family's had the book for the past three days," he said. "It's time
we
had a chance. Besides, I'm oldest."

"But wait till you hear what my wish
is
," said Barnaby.

"I don't want to," said John. "You're always so sure your ideas are best. Well, maybe somebody else can have an idea for a change!"

Abbie looked worriedly from one to the other. "It's all going wrong," she said. "It started the minute you said you'd keep the book. Let's change our minds before you start fighting. Remember last time!"

Once in the past John and Barnaby had had a fight, and it had been awful, maybe because they were usually best friends, and when best friends fall out, it is worse than any other quarrel. All their regard for each other seems to sour and turn to spite and meanness. And the hurts that friends can do each other cut deeper and take longer to heal.

Right now John and Barnaby were eyeing each other in a way that reminded Abbie of that other awful time. John's face was red and his forehead creased in an ugly frown. Barnaby was pale and he was smiling, but it was a dangerous smile.

"You couldn't have an idea like this one," he said tauntingly, "in a million years."

"That's the worst of you little runts," said John, "always boasting 'cause you're too weak to do anything else!"

"Little" is a fighting word, and so is "runt," and "weak" is unforgivable. To hear them all in one sentence was too much for Barnaby, and his smile seemed to freeze on his face. "Oh, can't I?" he said. "Where's that book?"

Dodging past John, he grabbed it rather roughly from Susan's hand.

"You can't push
my
sister around!" cried John.

"He didn't," said Susan mildly, but John was past heeding.

"You give that back," he said, and he, too, laid hold of the book.

"Stop them, somebody!" wailed Abbie. "Let's take the book back to the library right now, before it's too late!"

But it already was.

The tug of war the book was undergoing proved too much for its age-worn spine. Suddenly it gave way, and John was left clutching a few torn-out pages while Barnaby waved the rest of the book triumphantly before his eyes.

"Just for that," he cried, "I'm going alone. I don't need
any
of you! Good-bye!"

And he was gone.

John looked stupidly from the place where Barnaby had been standing to the piece of book in his hand. His face was pale now and not angry at all. "Gee," he said. "I didn't mean
that
to happen. Why'd I get so mad?"

"It's the magic," said Abbie. "It
wants
to go back to the library. When you said it couldn't, it made you get all horrible."

"I know," said John, shamefaced. "I could hear myself being awful, but I couldn't stop. I'm sorry." He looked at the torn pages in his hand. They were blank, save for the back flyleaf of the book, from which the library slip stared up at him ironically with today's date stamped on it.

Susan saw this at the same time, and now it was her turn to utter a cry. "Oh!" she said. "You've got the
last
pages. That means Barnaby's off somewhere in the middle of some adventure with a magic book that hasn't got any ending! And
that
prob'ly means his
adventure
won't have an ending and he'll never get out of it and come home again!"

"We'd better find him right away," said John, all his anger forgotten in concern for his friend. "Where would he be?"

"Somewhere in some book," said Fredericka. "Trust Barnaby!" But her smile was a shaky one.

As for Abbie, she was near tears, but she forced her mind to think. "Maybe
Robinson Crusoe
," she ventured. "One whole year he hardly read anything else."

"Well," said John, "here goes. I hope."

Everyone joined hands, and he wished on the tattered remnant of magic that was all they had left. And perhaps because the end of a book is its most important part in a way and a key to all that has gone before, the magic worked as well as if its outward and visible form hadn't been mutilated at all. The next instant the four children found themselves standing on a rocky and beach-rimmed isle by a blue and sounding sea under a hot and cloudless sky.

In the distance a familiar figure was silhouetted against the horizon. It wore a jacket and cap of goatskin and carried an umbrella of the same material. Following it at a respectful distance was another figure, of native aspect. Otherwise, and in every direction, the island was plainly uninhabited. As Fredericka said afterwards, desert was putting it mildly. And the only extra footprints on the sand were the four children's own.

"He isn't here," said Susan.

"Unless he's turned
into
one of them," said Abbie, pointing at the distant figures. But this was plainly nonsense. Robinson Crusoe and Friday are Robinson Crusoe and Friday forever and ever, and
no one
could take their place, magic or not.

"Where'll we try next?" said John. "What's he been reading lately?"

"Dickens," said Fredericka. "Ever since we saw that old movie of
David Copperfield
on television, he's been working his way through our set of Complete Works. He says they're worth it. I say they're too long. Too sad, too."

"We might as well try everything," said John. Once more the four children joined hands. But first they rubbed their footprints out carefully so Robinson and Friday wouldn't think ghosts had been visiting their beach. And
then
John wished.

It was quite a change from the island's tropic glare to Christmas Eve in old London. The children's breath smoked on the chilly air, and a few snowflakes fell. Chimes rang and carol-singers sang carols.

"Humbug!" muttered an old gentleman, emerging from his office. But "Merry Christmas!" said almost everyone to almost everyone else.

A ragged boy who was sweeping the street crossing didn't seem merry at all, however, and Abbie, touched by his poor and friendless looks, pressed her only nickel into his hand, hoping he could later exchange it for coinage of the realm at the nearest bank.

"Move on," said a passing policeman.

The boy moved on, and Abbie ran to join the others, who were looking in at a window of one of the houses.

Inside the window a poor but happy family was finishing its Christmas pudding and drawing round the hearth, where chestnuts sputtered and cracked, while the father of the family poured holiday drinks from a jug.

"God bless us every one," said the crippled son of the family, raising his custard cup (without a handle).

But Barnaby was not among those at Tiny Tim's Christmas dinner.

Inside the Old Curiosity Shop across the street, where the four children ran to look next, Little Nell and her grandfather were hopefully packing for their long, wandering journey into the country.

But Barnaby was not among the other curiosities in the shop.

"This is no good," said John. "That Dickens wrote about seventy books, didn't he? We'll never find the right one this way."

"And maybe the right one isn't Dickens at all," said Abbie.

"We need a system," said John.

"Well," said Fredericka, "there's that bookshelf at home by Barnaby's bed where he keeps all his favorite ones."

"Why, yes," said Abbie. "We could go home and make a list and then try them all one by one."

"Reading from left to right," put in Susan, who liked things to be methodical.

John shook his head. "
Our
book wouldn't stand it," he said. "It'd wear out." And indeed the few pages in his hand were already looking weather-beaten, what with exposure to the tropic sun followed suddenly by snowflakes melting all over them. "Besides, think of all the
other
books he's read from the library. He could be in any one of them. And he's taken out hundreds more than any of us. Lots that we've prob'ly never heard of, even!"

"Wait," said Abbie, for these words had given her an idea. But it needed thinking out, and maybe she would be betraying a secret.

"You remember," she began slowly, "that book of his own that he's working on?"

"Is there really one?" said John. The others had heard of Barnaby's book, but they'd never given it much thought. Probably it was just another of his ideas.

"Yes, there really is," said Abbie. "At least he has these adventures he makes up when he can't sleep, and he's put some of them down on paper. Well, I was thinking, if you were mad at people and running away from them, wouldn't a story of your own be just the place you'd go and hide in?"

"What's his story about?" said John.

"He wouldn't ever tell me very much," said Abbie. "All I know is, he calls it 'Barnaby the Wanderer,' and it's about this boy sort of like
him
, except he goes wandering around on his own having adventures all by himself. So you see the being alone part works out, too."

"Where does he wander?" said Fredericka.

"Just about everywhere, I guess. All over the world, and I know he goes into the past, but not the future, because Barnaby said once he hasn't worked that part out yet."

"That's something," said John. "That narrows it down. He's somewhere in the present or the past, and he's somewhere in some country."

"
Our
book'll know," said Abbie. "Just wish to be with him and let the magic figure out where."

"But would our book know about a book that's not finished yet, and it's still just in somebody's mind?" said Susan.

"I think," said Abbie, "that our book would know about
everything.
"

"Let's try," said Fredericka.

For the third time the four children joined hands and for a third time John wished.

"We want to go after Barnaby the Wanderer," he told the magic, "wherever he's wandering."

And the magic took them there.

Barnaby the Wanderer wandered along the road.

It was a good road to wander along because
it
wandered,
too,
all over the map and in and out of the centuries. Today, for example, when he went through that last valley, it had been Old Roman times, but now that he was climbing the hill, it was Merrie England and the Ages were Middle.

He had been delayed a little in the valley because Julius Caesar was conquering Gaul down there at the moment, and the leader of one of his cohorts had suddenly developed the falling sickness, and Barnaby the Wanderer had to step in and save the day. When the battle was over and won, Caesar wanted him to join the army and be second in command. But Barnaby the Wanderer would never stay, no matter how hard people begged. Always he must wander on.

Right now he wandered up the hill into the Age of Chivalry. He could tell it was the Age of Chivalry because of all the castles scattered here and there about the landscape and all the knights he could see riding in different directions on different quests. But Barnaby the Wanderer was the most gallant knight among them. And soon he had a chance to prove it.

As he reached the crest of the hill, a lady galloped toward him on a palfrey, closely pursued by a giant on a black steed. Barnaby the Wanderer knew the giant well by sight. He was a particularly mean specimen who made a habit of kidnapping ladies and taking them to a dolorous tower, where he married them and treated them in a Bluebeard manner. But this time he had met his match.

Barnaby the Wanderer drew his lance and barred the way.

"Oh gramercy," remarked the lady, reining in her horse and preparing to watch the combat with interest.

"Out of the way, minikin," said the giant rudely, sneering down at Barnaby the Wanderer from his vast height. "Your puny lance would be but a mere pinprick to such as me! Besides, you're too short to reach! Yah!"

Barnaby the Wanderer wasted no breath in answering back. His strength was as the strength of ten because he was Barnaby the Wanderer. With a mighty heave he sent his lance vaulting into the air. Its point entered the giant's throat in the space between helmet and breastplate, and he toppled from the saddle and crashed to the ground. Barnaby the Wanderer whipped out his sword and wapped off the giant's head, thus rendering him harmless.

"Oh, thank you!" cried the lady. "Did you do this for love of me?"

"No, I didn't," said Barnaby the Wanderer. "I did it to show I could and because he thoroughly deserved it." And mounting the giant's horse he rode off into the sunset.