Shadowland (39 page)

 
   'We cannot breathe in water. We cannot fly. Not until we find the secret muscles that enable us to do so.

 
   'Spread, your hands, boys. Spread your arms. I want you to see your shoulders in your minds. See those muscles, see those bones. Think of those shoulders opening, opening . . . think of them opening out.'

 
   Tom remembered . . . saw what he had seen. His muscles flaring and widening, something new and reckless moving in his mind.

 
   'When I say
one,
you will inhale; when I say
two,
you will exhale and think very calmly about rising an inch or two above the floor. One.'

 
   Tom remembered filling his chest with air: the new sensation in his mind began to burn bright yellow.

 
   'Two.'

 
   Within the memory of the theater, another memory bloomed: Laker Broome crazily sweeping through aisles of boys in chapel, jabbing his finger, shouting. Hatred filled him, and he pushed all the air from his lungs. The wooden floor had seemed to tremble beneath him.

 
   'Just let your mind roam,' came the strong quiet voice.

 
   He had seen himself floating up like a helium-filled balloon: then he had again seen. Laker Broome standing like an actor before the smoke-filled auditorium, giving him useless orders; seen the Reverend Mr. Tyme prancingat his father's funeral; seen Del, levitating in a dark bedroom. Then he had seen the most disturbing images of all, tanks and soldiers and bloody corpses and women with the heads of beasts all lacquered on a ceiling above him, images filled with such horror and disgust that they seemed to whirl about the image of a man in belted raincoat and wide-brimmed hat who made them dance. . . .

 
   
Why, yes,
he had thought.
Like that.
And suddenly weightless, had rolled over on his back and not touched the ground. His mind felt like fire.

 
   Then another image rammed into his mind, even more horrifying than the last: he saw the auditorium full of boys and masters, himself and Del onstage as Flanagini and Night. He was far above them all, and his eyes hurt, his head was bursting with pressure. His long spidery body felt as though needles had pierced it. He was seeing with Skeleton Ridpath's eyes, and his body was Skeleton's, just before the fire.

 
   He had collapsed heavily onto the wooden floor. Blood burst from his nose.

 
   'So now you see,' Collins had whispered to him.

 
'Don't you know now that you could breathe in water?' Collins said. Tom's whole body ached; the cold tore at him.

 
   'The secret is hate,' Collins said mildly. 'Rather, the secret lies in hating well. You have the germ of quite a good hater in you.'

 
   Tom tugged the fur robe more tightly about him. His ears were cold enough to drop from his head.

 
   'I want to show you one thing more, little friend.'

 
   'But I didn't really fly,' Tom said. 'I just went up . and I rolled over — '

 
   'One thing more.'

 
   The icy wind ripped at them, and pulled Collins' face back into the wolfs visage. He snapped his whip up into the air, hauled at the reins with his other hand, and cracked the whip down as the horse plunged around in the snow.

 
   When the whip landed, the horse screamed and took off downhill like a cannonball. The wolf-face turned andgrinned at him just as the wind blurred Tom's eyes, and the world turned as misty as the walls of the big theater. Tom pulled the fur robe up over his face and inhaled its cold, dusty, slightly gamy aroma until he felt the sleigh begin to slow down.

 
   They were on level ground. A wide plain of snow lay in moonlight like a room without walls. In the center of the plain stood a tall burning building.

 
   Tom stared at the blazing building as they drew nearer to it: burning, it seemed to diminish in size. They trotted ten feet nearer, close enough now to feel the heat pouring from the blaze.

 
   'Do you recognize it?'

 
   'Yes.'

 
   'Get out of the sleigh,' the magician ordered. 'Walk closer to it.'

 
   He did not move at first, and Collins clutched one of his elbows through the robe and yanked him across his body and dumped him out into the snow. The robe slithered, and Tom snatched at it to keep its warmth about him. He stood up; his burning feet barely cracked the snow's hard surface.

 
   'Are we really here?' he asked.

 
   'Go closer and
really
look.' His voice made a joke of the word.

 
   Tom limped toward the edge of the fire. It was no taller than himself. There was Fitz-Hallan's room, there was Thorpe's. Metal beams curled in the midst of the flames. He could hear the glass panels cracking and shattering around the enclosed court. And would there be a dwarf lime tree, shriveling and blackening? The building tightened down into itself a notch. Was it just a film — a projection from somewhere? It warmed him like a fire.

 
   He began to weep.

 
   'What does it say to you?' Collins asked, and Tom whirled around to see him. He looked like a Russian nobleman in his fur-collared coat.

 
   'It's too much,' Tom managed to get out, hating himself for crying.

 
   'Of course it is. That's part of the point. Look again.'

 
   Tom turned again and looked at the burning school.

 
   'What does it say to you? Open your mind to it and let it speak.'

 
   'It says . . . get out of here.'

 
   'Does it really?' The magician laughed: he knew better.

 
   'No.'

 
   'No. It says,
Live while you can. Get what you can when you can.
You haven't been bad at that, you know.'

 
   Tom began to shake. His feet were frozen, his face blazed like the fire. Coleman Collins seemed about to see straight inside him, and to cynically dismiss what he saw there. Like any young person, Tom was adept at intuiting other people's attitudes toward him, and for a moment it occurred to him that Coleman Collins hated both Del and himself.
The secret lies in hating well.
He was trembling so violently that the robe would have slipped from his shoulders if he had not gripped it with both hands. 'Please,' he said, asking for something so large he could not encompass it in words.

 
   'It is night. You must go to bed.'

 
   
'Please.'

 
   'This is your kingdom too, child. Insofar as I make it yours. And insofar as you can accept what you find in it.'

 
   'Please . . . take me back.'

 
   'Find your own way, little bird.' Collins cracked the whip, and the horse lunged forward. The magician swept past without another glance. Tom flailed out for the bar at the end of the sleigh, missed it, and fell. Cold leaked up his thighs, slithered down his chest. He pulled up his head to find the fire, but it too was gone. Collins' sleigh was just disappearing into the firs.

 
   Tom got his knees under him and awkwardly stood up, gripping the robe. From the other side of the snowy plain a wind approached, made visible by the swirl of snow it lifted and spun. The trace of the wind arrowed straight toward him; he turned to take it on his back and saw flecks of green just before the wind knocked his legs out from under him and deposited him —

 
   on nothing, on green air through which he fell without falling, spun without moving. He threw out his arms and caught the padded arm of a chair.

 
15

 
He was back in Le Grand Theatre des Illusions. One light burned gloomily down at him, revealing in semi-chiaroscuro his strewn clothing. Tom yanked his trousers on and shoved his feet into his shoes; he balled up his socks and underwear and thrust them into a pocket. Then he put on his shirt. All this he did mechanically, numbly, with a numb mind.

 
   He looked at his watch. Nine o'clock. Nine or ten hours had vanished while Coleman Collins played tricks with him.

 
   He went down the darkened hall. What had Del been doing all this time? The thought of Del revived him — he wanted to see him, to have his story matched by Del's. That morning, he had been almost joyful, being at Shadowland; now he again felt endangered. Warmth was just beginning to return to bis frozen toes.

 
   Tom had reached the point in the hallway, just before it turned into the older part of the house, where the short corridor led to the forbidden door. Tom stood at the juncture of the two corridors looking at the cross-beamed door. He remembered Collins' words:
This is your kingdom too, child.
He thought: Well, let's see the worst.

 
   And as he had said to Del the first night, wasn't the very commandment not to open it a disguised suggestion that he look behind the door?

 
   'I'm going to do it,' he said, and realized that he had spoken out loud.

 
   Before he could argue himself out of his mood of defiance, he moved down the short hallway and put his hand on the doorknob. The brass froze his hand. He thought back to the third thing Collins had shown him, back in the wintry sleigh: a boy opening a door and being engulfed by lyric, singing brightness.

 
   Your wings, or your song?

 
   He pulled open the forbidden door.

 
16

 
The Brothers

 
'Look, Jakob,' a man said, looking up from a desk. He smiled at Tom, and the man who sat at another desk facing him lifted his head from the papers before him and gave a similar quizzical, inviting smile. 'Do you see? A visitor. A
young
visitor.' His accent was German.

 
   'I have eyes. I see,' said the other man.