The potion changed Lucy’s father into a bird, thought Oscar. It changed me back into myself, and it changed that sandwich into an apple turnover. But what about the other times we used the potion? Why didn’t it work then?
He yawned. It was a relief to feel tired at last, and as he closed his eyes, Oscar remembered something Pa had once told him. The best way to solve a problem was to sleep on it. The mind had a funny way of coming up with answers when you were sleeping, Pa had said. It was one of the great blessings of rest.
When Oscar awoke, he didn’t know where he was. He had been dreaming about the attic. In his dream, a cat had been running up and down a long table, scattering papers in the air. Oscar had reached his hand into a cloud of papers swirling about his head and grabbed one. He was just starting to read it when he woke up.
He blinked. He wasn’t in the attic. He was in the smokehouse, and he could see sunlight around the edges of the doors.
Notes on a Theory of Transformation. That was what the paper in the dream had said. But Oscar knew he had seen those same words on a real piece of paper. He had read them on that first night, when he had lapped up the spilled potion and found himself in the attic. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time. He had put the paper back down on the table. But it’s probably still there, thought Oscar. And if Lucy’s father made the transforming potion, maybe he wrote down instructions for using it.
Oscar stood up and stretched. His bones hurt from sleeping on the pine boards of the smokehouse floor. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt rough. He pushed open the door and saw that the sun was high up, glaring at him. It had to be late morning. Lucy was sure to be up. He could ask for a drink, maybe even breakfast.
But she wasn’t home. The house was empty, and Oscar saw that the automobile was gone from the driveway. So he helped himself to breakfast, finding a loaf of bread in the cupboard and the jar of strawberry jam in the kitchen’s big white icebox. He drank cup after cup of cold water from the kitchen sink. It all felt like trespassing, even stealing, and he hurried to clean up afterward.
Then he went upstairs, ignoring an impulse to look around the house, to poke his head into the various rooms. It had been eerie enough sitting in his own room yesterday with Lucy; he had felt like some kind of ghost. He went straight up to the attic, climbed through the trapdoor hole, and looked around.
Someone had cleaned things up since the other night. The broken glass was gone, and the papers that had been strewn all over were stacked in neat piles on the table.
The first sheaf of papers he picked up wasn’t what he was looking for, though it was interesting enough. A Theory of Transportation, someone had written at the top of the first page. There was a sketch on the page — a round circle with a pentagon in the middle. There were scratchy designs around the pentagon.
Oscar tried to read the notes that accompanied the sketch. There was a long discussion of space and time that didn’t make any sense to him. But a few sentences at the end caught his interest:
Oscar wondered if the round thing in the picture was supposed to be the traveling talisman. It must be some sort of magical object, he decided. Put your finger through the hole in the middle, say where you wanted to go, and there you were. It sounded like a handy sort of thing to have.
Handy, and rather silly. For the first time, it occurred to Oscar that Lavonne might have written the notes he was reading. Lucy had said that most of the things in the attic were Lavonne’s, and that she had been interested in magic. He pictured his sister waving a magic wand. It was the sort of thing he might have laughed at once upon a time.
He didn’t laugh now. Instead, he paged through the rest of the papers in his hand. He set them down and picked up another sheaf. And another, and another, until at last he found what he was looking for at the top of a paper filled with rows of black ink and small notes in red around the edges. “‘Notes on a Theory of Transformation,’” he read aloud.
Before Oscar could read further, however, he heard noises downstairs — the kitchen door squeaking open, footsteps on the floor, and faraway voices. He tiptoed over to the window and looked down. The automobile was back. He hadn’t even heard it come up the drive.
Now the voices were getting louder. Lucy and her mother were coming up the front stairs. Oscar crept over to the trapdoor to listen.
“I have a headache, Lucy. I’m going to lie down,” said her mother. “Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be okay.”
“I’m sure your father will call this afternoon.”
“I know.”
From the sound of her voice, Oscar could tell that Lucy was standing in the hallway near the attic closet. He heard a door close. He hesitated a moment, then spoke as loud as he dared: “Lucy!”
The door to the attic closet opened and Lucy’s face looked up at him. “What are you doing up there?” she whispered.
“I’ve got something to show you. . . .”
“Shh!” Lucy threw a worried glance over her shoulder.
“Come on up!”
“All right. But be quiet!”
“Where were you?” he asked her when they were both in the attic. Lucy was wearing a dress, not the denim trousers she had been wearing last night.
“At church,” she said. “And afterward we went to Aunt Helen and Uncle Byron’s for dinner. It was awful.”
“Why?”
“Everyone’s finally figured out that my father is really gone. My mother thinks he’s left home — run out on us or something like that because they had a big argument the other day. Everyone’s really worried. And Sheriff Jensen was there. That made it worse.”
“Who’s Sheriff Jensen?”
“Some friend of Uncle Byron’s. Aunt Helen invited him because he knows my dad. So it was supposed to be fun — only my dad wasn’t there, and it all turned into one big interrogation.”
“Interrogation!”
“Well, maybe that’s not the right word,” said Lucy. “But he is a policeman, and when everybody got all worried about my father, he started asking questions. Like, who was the last person to see my father? That was me. And when did I last see him? And did he seem all right when I last saw him? Anyway, my mother started to cry, and Sheriff Jensen actually said he’d get some people out looking for my dad.”
“Maybe you should tell what really happened,” said Oscar.
“I can’t. She’d never believe me.”
Then Oscar remembered the sheaf of papers in his hand. “I think I’ve found something,” he said. He laid the papers on the table, smoothed the top one with his hand, and read aloud:
Oscar scowled. “This isn’t any good. I thought it would tell us how the potion works. You see, I got it to work last night after all.”
“You did?”
Oscar told her about the apple turnover. “But I couldn’t get it to work after that,” he said.
Lucy studied the paper more closely. “This is Aunt Lavonne’s handwriting,” she said.
“I don’t see why she bothered writing such nonsense.” Oscar felt almost annoyed with Lavonne, as if she weren’t an unfamiliar old lady but still his younger sister.
“She probably didn’t write it. She told my father about some old book on alchemy. I bet the book was written in Latin or Greek, and this is her translation of something it said.”
“But what does it mean?” said Oscar. “‘The sleeper dreams of an egg . . .’”
“It could mean anything,” said Lucy. “The sleeper isn’t necessarily a sleeper. The egg doesn’t have to be an egg. They’re probably symbols for something else. My father said the alchemists used symbols for everything.”
“What do you suppose this means?” said Oscar, pointing to a note in red ink in the margin of the paper:
“That’s my father’s handwriting.” Lucy screwed her eyes shut, and Oscar could tell she was thinking. “He said something about imagination,” she said after a moment. “When he was telling me about the transforming potion, he s
aid that the potion was a catalyst for the interaction between imagination and language.”
“What’s a catalyst?” Oscar wondered.
“Something in chemistry, I think.”
“You haven’t got a dictionary, have you?”
They found one on the bookshelves at the end of the attic. “It says a catalyst is an agent that induces catalysis,” said Oscar.
“I hate it when they do that! What’s it say under catalysis?”
“Something about chemistry, just as you said. Then it says more: ‘an action or reaction between two or more persons or forces precipitated by a separate agent and especially by one that is essentially unaltered by the reaction.’”
“What does ‘precipitated by a separate agent’ mean?” said Lucy.
“Precipitating can mean making something happen more quickly than you’d expect,” said Oscar. “I know because I got it wrong once in a spelling bee and had to look it up afterward.”
“Maybe the imagination is one force and words are the other,” said Lucy. “The potion is the separate agent that precipitates their reaction!”
“That’s it, Lucy!” Oscar closed the dictionary. “When you tried to make the sea appear, were you really imagining it?”
“I don’t think I was.”
“I wasn’t either when I tried to make the ocean,” said Oscar. “But when I turned that sandwich into an apple turnover, I was really picturing it in my mind.”
“It’s not enough just to say what you want! You have to imagine it!” said Lucy.
Oscar took the bottle of potion from his pocket. It gleamed like a dark jewel in the light from the window. “We ought to test it,” he said.
“You’re right.” Lucy looked down at the table. “Try this,” she said.
Oscar hesitated.
“It’s a paper clip,” said Lucy.
“I know. We had those back then. I was just wondering what to change it into.”
Lucy thought for a moment. “What about a butterfly?” she said.
“All right.” Trying not to let his hand shake, Oscar tipped a drop of potion onto the paper clip. “Butterfly!” he said firmly, concentrating his thoughts. And suddenly a black-and-yellow swallowtail fluttered up in front of him.
“I was imagining a monarch!” said Lucy, her voice filled with wonder.
“I was the one holding the bottle,” said Oscar. The swallowtail danced in the air like a puppet, just as he had pictured it in his mind. Then it skipped along the ceiling and out the open window. Its wings shimmered in the sunlight as it floated across the grass and out of sight.
That night Lucy’s mother seemed to take forever going to bed. Lucy, who had pretended to be tired soon after supper, had to sit in her room and wait. The phone rang at nine, and then again at ten thirty. It was Aunt Helen each time, and each time, Lucy’s mother said the same things: “No, we haven’t heard a thing,” and, “Yes, I’m sure he’ll call tomorrow. . . . I’ll let you know right away,” and, “I’m sure everything will be just fine.”
Only it wasn’t going to be fine, Lucy knew. Oscar was waiting for her outside. They were going to leave tonight. In the morning, they would be gone, and her mother might never know what had happened to her.
When at last she was sure that her mother was asleep, Lucy stole down the stairs and out the front door. As she crossed the lawn toward the rowboat, Oscar stepped out from the trees. “Have you got the potion?” he said.
“Here.” Handing it to him, Lucy nearly dropped the bottle. She was so nervous that she felt cold. Her teeth were chattering. She looked back at The Brick and saw a disappointing moon rising above the house. It was nowhere near full, nor was it a familiar, satisfying crescent. It looked broken — the wrong kind of moon for an adventure. Lucy’s hand felt inside her sweatshirt until she found the touch of cold metal. She was wearing the medallion she had found in the attic. For luck, she had told herself as she put it on earlier. For luck, she reminded herself now.
“Are you ready?” asked Oscar.
Lucy nodded. They had already agreed that Oscar would handle the transformation, given that he had a better mental picture of the way the sea ought to look. “The sea!” he said. Two words, and there it was, rolling in from the horizon like a black shadow, colder and darker than Lucy had imagined it, bringing with it a chill, salty wind.
“Let’s go,” said Oscar.
Lucy sat in the stern as Oscar pulled the boat away from shore. She watched him lean toward her, the blades of the oars slicing through the air until they caught the water behind him. Then the oars came forward in a swift, strong sweep as he stretched back toward the bow. Again and again and again the boat sprang forward, and Oscar never stopped gazing at the shore behind Lucy. She wondered whether he was thinking of another time — of Lavonne, racing back to the house to wake everyone.
Oscar stopped rowing. He rubbed his knuckles. “Where’s your moon path?” he said.
“What?”
“I thought you said we were to follow the path made by the moon on the water.”
Lucy looked back at the moon. It was so high in the sky above The Brick that it left only a flickering patch on the water about halfway between the rowboat and the shore.
“Common sense says we ought to row out to sea,” Oscar suggested.
“I’ll row,” Lucy offered.
“Give it a try,” said Oscar.
Lucy had watched Oscar while he rowed, so she knew in her mind what she was supposed to do. But she had trouble forcing her arms to obey her thoughts. If she got the least bit tired (which she did almost immediately), one or the other oar would twist in her hands, slicing through the water like a knife. Or an oar would catch the top of a wave and splash Oscar. The stern zigzagged back and forth against the horizon.
“You’re doing fine,” said Oscar. “It takes a while to get a feel for rowing.”
“But we’re not getting any farther out from shore. I think we’re getting closer!”
“Suppose I row for a bit,” said Oscar. “At least far enough out so we don’t have to see The Brick perched at the water’s edge like that. I don’t know about you, but it makes me nervous.”
Lucy had to agree. There was something disturbing about being so close to the border of two worlds. When they had stood on shore, it was the sea that had looked mysterious and strange. Now it was The Brick that looked unreal. It seemed impossible to Lucy that her mother was still sleeping inside the house.
A half hour later, Oscar stopped his rowing. “We can’t see land anymore,” he said. “There won’t be a moon path for a while,” he added. “Not until the moon begins to set, anyway. We might as well just rest. Otherwise we’re likely to row back to shore again.”
Try as she might, however, Lucy couldn’t rest. For a long time she watched the moon, now useless and small above them. She watched the water that stretched to the horizon in all directions. Somewhere there was a shoreline, she thought, with The Brick overlooking the water. Her mother was there. And somewhere, her father was on an island. But where? She felt as though someone had thrown a blindfold over her and whirled her around and around.
She pictured her mother checking on her, not finding her in bed, calling for her. Would she think she had run away? How long would she look for her before she gave up? A hundred years from now, would someone be trying to solve the mystery of Lucy Martin’s disappearance?
She looked at Oscar. He was stretched out in the bow — stretched out as much as he could be in such a tiny space. His legs were draped over the seat, his arms resting on the sides of the boat. The oars were pulled in. She had thought he was asleep, but now she could see his eyes looking at her in the moonlight.
“What’s it like?” she said. “Finding yourself in the future?” She felt cruel for asking the question, like a scientist sliding Oscar’s feelings under a microscope.
Oscar pulled himself up and leaned over the side, rippling the cold water with his hand. “It makes me think of a time when I
was little, when Pa took me on a train to Chicago,” he said. “And I fell asleep. When I woke up, Pa was gone. He’d gone up to the next car to talk to a cattle farmer he knew, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know passengers could go from car to car. I just thought Pa had left the train and forgotten me. I remember looking out the window, thinking that if I could just find something I recognized — a farmhouse or a tree or a road — I could get off the train and go home and find Pa. But nothing was familiar. And I was so little that I didn’t really understand why. I didn’t know we were miles away from Martin. I thought the reason I couldn’t recognize anything was that the train was going so fast.” Oscar drew his hand out of the water and rubbed it dry on his shirt. “That’s what it’s like,” he told Lucy. “Just like that fast train — nothing’s familiar and I can’t get off.”
Not just everything being unfamiliar, thought Lucy. But finding your mother gone — dead! She didn’t dare ask Oscar how he felt about that.
“Tell me about your mother,” said Oscar.
“What about her?” said Lucy, startled because she thought he had read her mind.
“She wanted to be a writer once,” said Oscar. “What does she like to write about?”
“I — I don’t know,” said Lucy. “She doesn’t exactly have time.”
“Sounds like my ma,” said Oscar. “Never having enough time for music.”
“She played the violin,” said Lucy. “I read about it in your composition books.”
“My what?”
“Your journals.”
“You read my journals?” Oscar sounded shocked.
“Well, I found them and —”
“Those were meant to be private,” said Oscar.
“Well, they didn’t say private! Aunt Lavonne read them. My dad read them,” said Lucy.
Oscar sighed. “I suppose everyone read them. Even Ma and Pa.”
“But there wasn’t anything terrible in them,” Lucy said quickly. “I liked reading about your family. They seemed so happy. Your parents got along so well. Not like mine.”
The Book of Story Beginnings Page 10
