Seven-Day Magic (15 page)

"Stay with me," called the lady after him in languishing tones.

But Barnaby the Wanderer would never stay. He had a rendezvous with destiny.

As he rode on, though, he rather wished he had someone with him to talk to and maybe boast a little about recent events. He remembered some friends he used to have, in another time and country, and wondered what they were doing now. Probably they were wondering and worrying about
him.
Very well, let them wonder. He must follow his fate alone.

At this moment the sun went behind a cloud and a mist rose from the earth.

"This is unusual," thought Barnaby the Wanderer. "For me the sun shines always fair."

But this time it didn't. The mist grew until it

mantled the entire landscape. Trees turned to huddled shapes, and who could say where was land and where was air? Suddenly the horse shied and would go no farther, but stood shivering and staring into the blankness with the rolling eye of fright.

Barnaby the Wanderer dismounted and tied the horse's reins to a bush. At least it
looked
like a bush and
felt
like a bush, but what with the mist growing ever thicker it might have been something else.

"Where am I?" thought Barnaby the Wanderer.

But he wandered on, leaving the horse snorting with fear behind him. Nothing must keep him from his chosen road. Besides, what with the mist now eddying and wreathing in tendrils about him and seeming to cling to his clothes and trying to hold him back, he could see better on foot and closer to the ground. But he wished he had not chosen to walk alone, just this once. He thought of friends left behind and wished one or all of them were with him now. No matter. He would show them. Or if he never returned, they would be sorry when he was gone.

What made the mist nastier than most mists was that it seemed to have a voice, or voices.

"Hist," whispered the mist.

Barnaby the Wanderer stood still.

"List," whispered the mist.

Barnaby the Wanderer listened.

"Listen, listen, do not hasten.
Enter not the Western postern
Where the ghastly cistern glistens,
Lest you learn the last, worst lesson,"

whispered the mist.

"Humph!" said Barnaby the Wanderer aloud. "No mere mist can mistlead
me.
I am Barnaby the Wanderer!"

"Mere, mere, mirror!" shrieked a sudden voice in his ear, followed by a peal of witchlike laughter.

"Ponder the pun," added a quieter voice in his other ear. But when he reached out his hand, there was no one there.

Still, he knew where he was now, or thought he did. He was in a time that never was on land or sea, in that Grimm, Thurber-ish country where witches are worse than ever was in Oz, and there are gloomy castles with thirteen clocks all stopped, and a Todal that gleeps and a Golux that harkens and warns.

He thought of other creepy legends, of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow and the Come-at-a-body that has more legs than arms and more hair than either. And he thought that this was not a time or a place to be alone in.

Still, all the more glory to him who explored it and lived to tell the tale, thought Barnaby the Wanderer on second thought. And he took out his pocket compass, though he could hardly see it through the moist mist, and turned toward the west.

As he stepped westward, the mist seemed to thin, and ahead the land was bright. Suddenly the foggy, dewy strands fell away, and his heart lifted as he emerged into a sun-drenched clearing. Straight before him was a gate, flanked on either side by a tall thorn hedge.

When Barnaby the Wanderer had last seen the sun, it was setting, but now it shone at high noon. Perhaps in this part of the country they had Daylight Saving, he thought. Or more likely here the time stood still.

The gate was built of stone and prettily planted about with clumps of narcissi, now in full bloom and scenting the air. There were letters carved on the gate's pediment, and he wandered closer to read them.

"Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Center Here," said the letters.

Barnaby the Wanderer thought he had read this sentence before, somewhere. But he thought that whoever had carved it on the gate hadn't gotten all of the words exactly right.

He hesitated. A gate might well be a postern, and this was almost surely the Western one, and he remembered the warning words of the mist. He had no wish to abandon hope or to learn any last worst lesson, either. But he was curious to see what was inside.

Then for the first time in a long while he remembered the magic book, which he'd put in his pocket for safekeeping, back when he was fighting the giant. He slapped his pocket to see if it was still there, and it was. Surely it would protect him. Not that he needed protecting, of course. Barnaby the Wanderer would always come out on top and without any help from anybody.

The gate was ajar, and he slipped through it.

For a moment he was disappointed at what he saw.

What he saw was a garden with a pool in the middle. And the pool didn't look like a ghastly cistern at all. It looked like an ordinary (though very handsome) marble pool. Probably there would be goldfish. He stepped closer to look.

There were no fish in the pool, only water, but water that was clearer and brighter than any he had ever seen before. And there, staring up from the water (and seeming to smile at him as Barnaby himself smiled in recognition) was his own reflection.

But never in any glass had he seen himself so clearly. Now for the first time he realized just how handsome and brilliant and wonderful he really was, more so even than he had always suspected.

"I am Barnaby the Wanderer!" he cried in tones of glad discovery.

And he fell on his knees by the pool to look closer.

Then as he looked the image changed.

Written in the face in the pool he suddenly seemed to see all the base, unworthy thoughts he had ever had and all the bad things he had ever done, rude, inconsiderate things and careless, forgetful things and hasty, hotheaded, spiteful things. And the face in the pool now seemed to him mean and selfish and hideous beyond belief.

He tried to tear his eyes away, but he couldn't. Something held them there. And he realized that he was under a magic spell and that the magic was stronger than he was.

In a panic he scrabbled in his pocket for the book and wished to be anywhere else in the world rather than here, but home with his family and friends would be best of all.

Nothing happened. Except that the face in the pool seemed to grow bigger and look worse.

Then he remembered that one of the bad things he had done was to tear the magic book, and now the magic had probably leaked out of it and he was probably doomed to kneel here staring at his own ugliness forever.

"I am Barnaby the Wanderer!" he cried, to reassure himself.

But that magic charm didn't work, either. And Barnaby the Wanderer knew despair.

From despair to remorse is but a step. He went over his worst deeds in his mind and regretted every one of them.

Then as the sun beat down and the face stared from the pool, all of the past seemed to blur and run together in his brain. His head ached, and even today's adventures faded and were forgotten. When he tried to think of home, he couldn't remember where he lived or the names of his sisters.

"I am Barnaby the Wanderer!" he tried to say again. But he had forgotten the right words. "I am Barnaby the Barnaby" was what came out. And after that, "Barnaby, Barnaby, Barnaby" was all he could find to say. He thought it was someone's name, but he had forgotten whose.

The magic book slipped from his fingers and fell at the edge of the water. In the pool the face seemed to swell until it filled the world and dominated the universe. Barnaby leaned closer, staring into its eyes. But he had forgotten what face it was, or why he was looking at it.

And the waters of the pool lapped nearer and nearer to the magic book.

If John had worded his wish differently, the magic might have taken the four children directly to the narcissus-y pool. But he had asked to follow Barnaby, wherever he was wandering; so now he and Susan and Abbie and Fredericka found themselves walking a winding and hilly road.

The first thing they met was the corpse of the giant. Susan and Abbie shut their eyes, but John and Fredericka surveyed it with interest.

"Pretty good," said John, "for a little fellow." And his tone made amends for the "runt" he had meanly uttered before.

"David and Goliath," agreed Fredericka, "would be putting it mildly."

The mist delayed the four children a little, but not so long as it had Barnaby, for it was not in a talking mood at the moment. The horse tied to the bush proved a puzzlement, but kind Abbie undid its reins and it galloped happily away to be a free wild horse forever.

Westward the land was brighter, and the four children turned toward it. A second later they came into the clearing. The gate stood open, and they hurried through.

They were just in time.

The lapping waters of the pool had reached the book by now, and a second later they might have carried it away, to what dark depths of oblivion who could tell?

But John ran forward and snatched it up and put his few last pages with it. And now that the book was whole again, the spell was broken, and Barnaby wrenched his eyes away from the face in the pool and turned and saw and knew them.

"You came," he said. "Thanks."

John put the two pieces of book into his hands. "Here," he said.

Barnaby looked at the book. Then he handed it back. "No," he said. His eyes were on John's. "Take it," he said. "It's all yours."

And everything between them that could never be talked about they had said in those few words.

There was a silence. Susan was watching John.

"Aren't you going to wish?" she asked. "It's your turn now. What was that adventure
you
wanted?"

"
The Three Musketeers
," said John slowly, "but now I don't know."

"Why do we need
them?
" said Fredericka, jigging up and down on the edge of the pool. "All they'd prob'ly do would be come riding to the rescue, and we've already rescued Barnaby perfectly well by ourselves!"

"Don't!" said Barnaby, in quick alarm. "Don't boast; it's dangerous. And come away from that pool before you look in." He pulled his sister to a safe distance; then he turned back to John.

"Wish
something
," he said. "I'll feel a lot better about everything if you do."

"All right," said John. "First of all I wish we were home."

And they were.

"And now," said John, "the next thing to do is take that book back to the library."

There was a chorus of protest from the others, sitting beside him on the steps of the big white house.

"Why?" was the general sense of everyone's remarks.

"Because I think it's time," said John.

"Without any adventure of your own? It doesn't seem right," said Susan. "In every book I ever read there was a wish for each one."

"Well," said John, "I've been thinking it over, and this is what I think. If I have a wish, then it's all sort of rounded out and the magic can end and maybe never start up again. But if I don't and we take the book back, then there's still unfinished business. And maybe someday the magic'll come back and take up where it left off."

Everyone gasped mentally at the nobility of this self-sacrifice.

"You mean we'll find the book again someday?" said Fredericka.

"That," said John, "or in some other form."

This was an exciting idea and showed definitely that Barnaby was not the only one who could have these. But Barnaby was still unhappy about the justice of it.

"I'll always think it was my fault," he said, "and it
will
be. Can you condemn a fellow human to the pangs of guilt?"

But he meant it.

"Well," said John slowly again, "I'll tell you what let's do. We'll take the book back, but we'll take it back
my way.
"

"But first," said Susan, "wait till I get something."

She ran to fetch glue and Scotch tape and a needle and thread, and she and Abbie fell to mending the damage the boys had done. And the book seemed so glad to be its full self again that the paper practically leaped to meet the glue and the torn binding all but embraced the benevolent needle, till in the end you would hardly have known that the hands of wrath had ever rent the book in twain in the first place.

"Now," said John. And he wished.

"What book are we part of now?" said Abbie a few seconds later, as the five children found themselves floating through the air with the greatest of ease on newly fledged wings.

"Lots of different ones," said Barnaby. "Flying comes into just about every magic book I ever read. It's just about everybody's first wish."

Fredericka, more daring than the others, now attempted to loop the loop, but she wasn't quite used to her wings yet and lost altitude dangerously, nearly grazing the tops of some tall trees.

"Auks!" said a bird-watcher who happened to be standing below.